crack up
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈkɹæk ˈʌp/
Forms: form: cracks up
form: cracking up
form: cracked up
form: cracked up
Senses: examples: text: It was hilarious. We were cracking up the whole time.
glosses: To laugh.
To laugh heartily.
examples: text: The joke about the nuns in the bath cracked me up.
text: The joy of “Ticket to Paradise” comes not from its predictable plotting or razor-thin screenplay; it’s from watching them together, from observing how the sparks still fly, and (when the former flames get drunk and let their guards down, or during the end-credit outtakes) watching them crack each other up.
ref: 2022 October 21, Jason Bailey, “How George Clooney and Julia Roberts Quietly Became the Tracy-Hepburn of Our Time”, in The New York Times:
glosses: To laugh.
To cause to laugh heartily.
examples: He's always cracking up at me about that.
glosses: To laugh.
To tease (someone) or tell jokes at the expense of (someone).
examples: text: She got through the war, but cracked up when her sister died.
text: All rather inhuman and undernourished, isn’t it? Well, that, children, is the true sign of cracking up.
ref: 1936 February, F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crack-Up”, in Esquire:
glosses: To break.
To become insane; to suffer a mental breakdown.
raw_tags: in US
examples: The university was really cracking up, losing faculty, students and donors, and it seemed like to go under.
My motorcycle cracked up before I arrived.
glosses: To break.
To break down or fall apart; to stop functioning; to shatter.
examples: I have to crack up that little clique.
glosses: To break.
To separate a group.
examples: text: From all directions they came to the rescue, one predominant fear gripping their hearts: Fire! Someone had cracked-up. It was for this they sped. The flames that so frequently burst from a crashed airplane became an instantaneous cauldron; many a pilot has lived through the crash to die in the fire that followed.
ref: 1930 December, Lawrence M. Guyer, “Chuck Luck: The Story of a Flying Dog”, in Boys' Life:
text: When I reported this to Burwell by telephone, he called me a Chinese ace — in those days Chinese aces were pilots who cracked up their own airplanes […]
ref: 1983, John Thorn, David Reuther, The Armchair Aviator, page 101:
glosses: To break.
To crash an aircraft or automobile.
examples: We can send you a hundred pounds a month of pecans to crack up.
glosses: To break.
To remove the shell from nuts.
examples: The refinery cracks up the heavier oils.
glosses: To break.
To crack (petroleum). (to break down (a complex molecule), especially with the application of heat: to pyrolyse)
examples: She wasn't as impressive as Katie cracked her up.
glosses: To affect the image of something.
To praise or applaud (something); to promote a positive view of (something).
examples: Those who have been cracking up the agricultural industry will hopefully reconsider their denigration of it.
glosses: To affect the image of something.
To insult, demean or harm the image of (something).
examples: text: This new computer system is not what it was cracked up to be.
text: No use, with a bloke like this, cracking up your own merits. Stick to the truth.
ref: 1939 June, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter IX, in Coming Up for Air, London: Martin Secker & Warburg, published 1948 (April 1959 printing), →OCLC, part II, page 132:
glosses: To affect the image of something.
To cry up; to extol.
qualifier: usually passive voice
raw_tags: in the negative
examples: text: I need to crack up.
glosses: To smoke crack cocaine.
Derived terms: all it's cracked up to be