cracker – English noun declension

English noun forms of cracker

Noun: cracker
Singularcracker
Pluralcrackers

Sample Sentences

  • What cracker is this same that deafs our ears? [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]:]
  • 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. [1929 February 10, The Sunday Times, Sydney, page 26, column 7:]
  • 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. [1911, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 9, page 146:]
  • a lobster and crab shell cracker
  • 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. [1984, Richard Sedric Fox Eells, Peter Raymond Nehemkis, Corporate Intelligence and Espionage: A Blueprint for Executive Decision Making, Macmillan, page 137:]
  • 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. [2002, Steve Jones, Encyclopedia of New Media, page 1925:]
  • 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. [2011 January 15, Saj Chowdhury, “Man City 4 - 3 Wolves”, in BBC:]
  • Brothers and the whiteys / Blacks and the crackers / Police and their backers / They're all political actors [1970, “(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go”, in Curtis, performed by Curtis Mayfield:]
  • 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! [1997, Kevin Smith, Chasing Amy, spoken by Hooper (Dwight Ewell):]
  • “You know that old cracker beat them boys.” [2019, Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys, Fleet, page 202:]

Etymology

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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. See: Middle English Nouns 'craker'.

Verbs referencing "cracker"

Finnish Nouns krakkeri, Russian Nouns крекер, Ukrainian Nouns крекер, Czech Nouns krekr, Swedish Nouns knäckare, German Nouns Cracker.