cracker
Part of speech: noun
Morphological type: derivation
Topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
sciences
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.
Base: crack
Affixes: -er
Inflected forms:
form: crackers
pos: noun
tags: plural
Senses:
gloss: A noisy boaster; a swaggering fellow.
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
examples: What cracker is this same that deafs our ears?
gloss: A dry, thin, crispy baked bread (usually salty or savoury, but sometimes sweet, as in the case of graham crackers and animal crackers).
pos: noun
gloss: A prawn cracker.
pos: noun
examples: 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.
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
gloss: A firecracker.
pos: noun
gloss: A Christmas cracker.
pos: noun
examples: 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.
gloss: A northern pintail, a dabbling duck of species Anas acuta.
pos: noun
tags: UK
gloss: A person or thing that breaks a thing (e.g., nutcracker).
pos: noun
examples: a lobster and crab shell cracker
gloss: A person or thing that breaks a thing (e.g., nutcracker).
pos: noun
gloss: A person or thing that breaks a thing (e.g., nutcracker).
pos: noun
tags: obsolete
gloss: A person or thing that breaks a thing (e.g., nutcracker).
pos: noun
examples: 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.
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.
gloss: A fine, great thing or person (crackerjack).
pos: noun
tags: Australia
Ireland
New-Zealand
UK
slang
examples: She's an absolute cracker!
The show was a cracker!
A cracker of a day.
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.
gloss: An ambitious or hard-working person (i.e. someone who arises at the 'crack' of dawn).
pos: noun
gloss: An impoverished white person from the southeastern United States, originally associated with Georgia and parts of Florida; (by extension) any white person (slang).
pos: noun
tags: US
derogatory
ethnic
offensive
slur
examples: Brothers and the whiteys / Blacks and the crackers / Police and their backers / They're all political actors
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!
“You know that old cracker beat them boys.”
Related words: crack
Derived words: 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
Translations: