cracker

Where “cracker” sits in English frequency

Definition

1. 1
   A noisy boaster; a swaggering fellow.
2. 2
   A dry, thin, crispy baked bread (usually salty or savoury, but sometimes sweet, as in the case of graham crackers and animal crackers).
3. 3
   A prawn cracker.
4. 4
   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.
5. 5
   A firecracker.
6. 6
   A Christmas cracker.
7. 7
   A northern pintail, a dabbling duck of species Anas acuta.
8. 8
   A person or thing that breaks a thing (e.g., nutcracker).
9. 9
   A person or thing that breaks a thing (e.g., nutcracker).
10. 10
    A person or thing that breaks a thing (e.g., nutcracker).
11. 11
    A person or thing that breaks a thing (e.g., nutcracker).
12. 12
    A fine, great thing or person (crackerjack).
13. 13
    An ambitious or hard-working person (i.e. someone who arises at the 'crack' of dawn).
14. 14
    An impoverished white person from the southeastern United States, originally associated with Georgia and parts of Florida; (by extension) any white person (slang).

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.

This word in other languages

Common misspellings

Also misspelled as: carcker,ccracker,craccker,cracekr,crackerr,crackker,crackre,crakcer,crcaker,crracker,rcacker

Misspelling Pattern Breakdown

How far each generated variant is from the correct spelling of cracker - expressed in single-character edits (insert, delete, or swap one letter). Bigger bars stand out at a glance; a one-edit slip is the hardest to catch.

Frequently Asked Questions