cracker
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: note: r
enpr: krăk'ə
ipa: /ˈkɹækə(ɹ)/
rhymes: -ækə(ɹ)
Forms: form: crackers
Etymology: From Middle English craker (“a boaster”), equivalent to crack (“to break, snap, utter, make a sound”) + -er. From crack (verb), the sound made when one is broken. The hard "bread" and "biscuit" sense is first attested in 1739.
The computing senses of cracker, crack, and cracking were promoted in the 1980s as an alternative to hacker, by programmers concerned about negative public associations of hack, hacking (“creative computer coding”). See Citations:cracker.
Various theories exist regarding the term's application to poor white Southerners. One theory holds that it originated with disadvantaged corn and wheat farmers (corncrackers), who cracked their crops rather than taking them to the mill. Another theory asserts that it was applied due to Georgia and Florida settlers (Florida crackers) who cracked loud whips to drive herds of cattle, or, alternatively, from the whip cracking of plantation slave drivers. Yet another theory maintains that the term cracker was in use in Elizabethan times to describe braggarts (see crack (“to boast”)); a letter from 1766 supports this theory.
Senses: examples: text: What cracker is this same that deafs our ears?
ref: c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:
glosses: A noisy boaster; a swaggering fellow.
synonyms: word: biscuit
coordinate_terms: biscuit
brittle
cookie
chip
crisp
hardtack
snap
toast
wafer
glosses: A dry, thin, crispy baked bread (usually salty or savoury, but sometimes sweet, as in the case of graham crackers and animal crackers).
examples: text: There was feasting and joy from Shanghai to the Wall,
What with dim-sims, chop-suey and crackers and all,
And the donor of these, by the hook of my crook.
Was Chiang Ki-Konglong, the Mandarin Cook.
ref: 1929 February 10, The Sunday Times, Sydney, page 26, column 7:
glosses: A prawn cracker.
synonyms: popper
snapper
glosses: The final section of certain whips, which is made of a short, thin piece of unravelled rope, or which is a short piece of twisted string tied to the end of the whip, which produces a distinctive cracking sound when the whip is cracked.
glosses: A firecracker.
examples: text: It is customary in every part of China to fire off crackers on the last day and night of the year for the purpose of terrifying expelling the devils.
ref: 1911, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 9, page 146:
glosses: A Christmas cracker.
glosses: A northern pintail, a dabbling duck of species Anas acuta.
examples: text: a lobster and crab shell cracker
glosses: A person or thing that breaks a thing (e.g., nutcracker).
glosses: A person or thing that breaks a thing (e.g., nutcracker).
Refinery equipment used to pyrolyse organic feedstocks. If catalyst is used to aid pyrolysis it is informally called a cat-cracker
glosses: A person or thing that breaks a thing (e.g., nutcracker).
A pair of fluted rolls for grinding caoutchouc.
examples: text: It stated to one of the company's operators, “The Phantom, the system cracker, strikes again . . . Soon I will zero (expletive deleted) your desks and your backups on System A. I have already cracked your System B.
ref: 1984, Richard Sedric Fox Eells, Peter Raymond Nehemkis, Corporate Intelligence and Espionage: A Blueprint for Executive Decision Making, Macmillan, page 137:
text: Likewise, early software pirates and "crackers" often used phrases like "information wants to be free" to protest the regulations against the copying of proprietary software packages and computer systems.
ref: 2002, Steve Jones, Encyclopedia of New Media, page 1925:
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
glosses: A person or thing that breaks a thing (e.g., nutcracker).
One who cracks (i.e. overcomes) computer software or security restrictions.
synonyms: black hat
hacker
coordinate_terms: script kiddie
examples: text: She's an absolute cracker!
text: The show was a cracker!
text: A cracker of a day.
text: And just before the interval, Kolarov, who was having one of his better games in a City shirt, fizzed in a cracker from 30 yards which the Wolves stopper unconvincingly pushed behind for a corner.
ref: 2011 January 15, Saj Chowdhury, “Man City 4 - 3 Wolves”, in BBC:
glosses: A fine, great thing or person (crackerjack).
glosses: An ambitious or hard-working person (i.e. someone who arises at the 'crack' of dawn).
examples: text: Brothers and the whiteys / Blacks and the crackers / Police and their backers / They're all political actors
ref: 1970, “(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go”, in Curtis, performed by Curtis Mayfield:
text: Check this shit: You got cracker farm boy Luke Skywalker, Nazi poster boy, blond hair, blue eyes. And then you got Darth Vader, the blackest brother in the galaxy, Nubian god!
ref: 1997, Kevin Smith, Chasing Amy, spoken by Hooper (Dwight Ewell):
text: “You know that old cracker beat them boys.”
ref: 2019, Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys, Fleet, page 202:
synonyms: word: corn-cracker
word: honky
word: peckerwood
word: redneck
word: trailer trash
word: white trash
word: whitey
word: wonderbread
word: ang moh
word: Angrez
word: balanda
word: béké
word: bule
word: Caucasian
word: cracker
word: cumskin
word: farang
word: firangi
word: gringo
word: gora
word: gussuk
word: gweilo
word: haole
word: honky
word: hoogie
word: hoojah
word: ice monkey
word: ivory
word: joganosh
word: kabloona
word: laowai
word: leucoderm
word: mayo
word: mayonnaise face
word: melanin-challenged
word: migaloo
word: mlungu
word: mzungu
word: ofay
word: oyinbo
word: paddy
word: Pakeha
word: paleface
word: pigskin
word: pinky
word: roundeye
word: saltine
raw_tags: for cracker
word: snow bunny
word: toubab
word: umlungu
word: vazaha
word: white
word: white bread
word: white devil
word: whiteface
word: white man
word: whitey
word: wigger
word: wonderbread
word: Yankee
glosses: An impoverished white person from the southeastern United States, originally associated with Georgia and parts of Florida; (by extension) any white person (slang).
Derived terms: animal cracker
bitch eating crackers
cannon cracker
cat cracker
Christmas cracker
Christ on a cracker
coal cracker
corn cracker
Corn-cracker State
Corn cracker State
cracka
cracker-ass
crackerass
cracker barrel
cracker-barrel
crackerberry
cracker bonbon
crackerbox
cracker bread
crackerbread
cracker-jack
cracker jack
crackerjack
cracker jacks
crackerless
crackerlike
cracker meal
Cracker Night
cracklet
cream cracker
flat cracker
Florida cracker
Georgia cracker
Graham cracker
graham cracker
holy crap on a cracker
hydrocracker
jatz crackers
Jatz crackers
oyster cracker
Polly want a cracker
prawn cracker
rice-cracker
rice cracker
safe-cracker
safecracker
shrimp cracker
soda cracker
steam cracker
table cracker
water cracker
Waterloo cracker
whipcracker
wit-cracker
Related terms: crack