cracker
Pluralcrackers
- 1A crisp, thin baked bread that is dry in texture and usually salty or savory, though some, such as graham and animal crackers, are sweet.
He spread peanut butter on a cracker for a quick snack.
Grandma always kept a tin of salted crackers next to the soup pot.
UsageUsually savory, unlike a cookie. In British English crackers can also be called biscuits, as in cheese and biscuits.
Similarbiscuit
- 2A small firework that explodes with a loud bang; a firecracker.
A cracker went off under the window, and the dog bolted under the bed.
Street vendors sold long strings of crackers for the Lunar New Year festival.
Similarfirecracker, banger
- 3A person who defeats the protection built into software or gets around computer security restrictions.
Within a week of release, crackers had stripped the license check from the new design software.
The bank hired a security firm after a cracker broke into its customer database.
UsageIn everyday talk hacker is the usual word for an intruder; many programmers prefer cracker for it.
Similarhacker
Note
The word keeps company with piracy too: early software pirates and crackers shared a cause, and a system cracker is someone who breaks into a computer system.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- Early software pirates and crackers shared opposition to restrictions on copying software. en.wiktionary.org
- 4An offensive term for an impoverished white person from the southeastern United States, originally one from Georgia or parts of Florida; by extension, any white person.
UsageBest kept to quotation or to discussion of the word itself.
Note
Readers meet it in song lyrics, film dialogue and novels such as Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys (2019), where it carries the speaker's contempt. Corn-cracker is used the same way. In Florida and Georgia some white people from long-settled families call themselves crackers with pride, but aimed at someone else the word is usually an insult.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Colson Whitehead wrote The Nickel Boys, first published in 2019. global.penguinrandomhouse.com
- The Nickel Boys contains a contemptuous use of cracker in dialogue. en.wiktionary.org
- Corn-cracker likewise has a derogatory sense referring to a poor white southerner. en.wiktionary.org
- Cracker can express regional pride among white people associated with Georgia and Florida. georgiaencyclopedia.org
- 5A prawn cracker: a light, puffed snack made from starch and prawn and deep-fried until crisp.
At the Chinese restaurant, I took a pink prawn cracker from the basket, and it melted on my tongue.
The waiter set down a basket of prawn crackers, light and crisp, and they were gone within minutes.
- 6A decorated paper tube that two people pull apart at Christmas, so that it snaps with a bang and releases a small gift.
Everyone at the table crossed arms to pull their crackers at the same moment.
The cracker snapped, and a tiny plastic puzzle fell into the gravy.
UsageYou pull a cracker with another person; inside there is often a paper hat, a joke and a small toy.
- 7A thing or person regarded as excellent or especially impressive.
What a cracker of a goal, curled into the top corner from outside the box!
The new series is a cracker, easily the best thing on telly this year.
UsageOften a cracker of a + noun, or a real cracker, an absolute cracker.
Similarbelter, stunner, gem, corker
Oppositedud
Note
Speakers in Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand use this slang for anything first-rate, a person or a show alike. In football commentary a cracker on its own is a superb long-range shot or goal. It is a close cousin of crackerjack.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- Cracker is related to crackerjack. en.wiktionary.org
- 8Refinery equipment that breaks down organic feedstocks by pyrolysis, or decomposition by heat; one that uses a catalyst to aid the process is informally called a cat-cracker.
The company is building a new cracker to turn ethane into the raw materials for plastics.
Heavy oil from the distillation column is fed to the crackers, which break it into lighter fuels.
- 9A person or thing that breaks something, as a nutcracker breaks nuts.
A heavy steel cracker made short work of the lobster claws.
Farmers ran the grain through a cracker to split the kernels before feeding it to the cattle.
Note
The agent-noun meaning: whatever cracks something open can be called a cracker. It is most at home in compounds and phrases naming what gets broken, written solid in nutcracker and open in a lobster and crab shell cracker. The same idea of breaking runs through the refinery machine and the software breaker.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- A cracker can be a person or thing that breaks something. en.wiktionary.org
- Nutcracker is a solid compound naming an implement that cracks nuts. en.wiktionary.org
- Refinery cracking involves breaking larger molecules into smaller ones. primis.phmsa.dot.gov
- Software cracking involves breaking software protection. en.wikipedia.org
Less common meanings
- 10A man who boasts noisily and carries himself with a swagger.
What cracker is this same that deafs our ears?
c. 1596, William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”Note
Middle English craker already meant a boaster, someone who cracked in the old sense of uttering a noise. Shakespeare's King John has the line "What cracker is this same that deafs our ears?"
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Middle English craker meant a boaster. en.wiktionary.org
- Cracker derives from crack, including its sense of uttering or making a sound, plus -er. en.wiktionary.org
- William Shakespeare's King John contains the quoted words, spoken by Austria in Act II, scene i. gutenberg.org
- 11A pair of fluted rollers used for grinding caoutchouc, or raw natural rubber.
Note
Rubber manufacture once used this name for its grinding rolls, which belong with the "thing that breaks" family: what they broke down was caoutchouc, raw natural rubber. That exact use is obsolete, though tire recyclers still grind scrap rubber in a cracker mill; in an oil refinery the word means the refinery machine instead.
Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- Cracker historically denoted fluted grinding rolls for caoutchouc. en.wiktionary.org
- The rubber machine breaks material down, fitting the 'thing that breaks' sense. eldan-recycling.com
- Caoutchouc is natural rubber. en.wiktionary.org
- Modern manufacturers still use rubber cracker and cracker mill for rubber processing machinery; the refinery sense has not displaced this use. cn-rubbermachine.com
- 12A white person descended from the old pioneer families of Florida or Georgia; in the region the name is often neutral or a point of pride, not an insult.
He calls himself a Georgia cracker and can name every ancestor who worked that red clay.
The county fair honors the crackers who settled the backcountry, with storytelling and old-time fiddle music.
UsageOften with the state in front: a Florida cracker, a Georgia cracker. Safest when people use it of their own families.
Note
Who says it decides how it lands. Families with deep roots in Florida or Georgia often use it of themselves, frequently with the state in front (a Florida cracker, a Georgia cracker), as a badge of pioneer descent.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- Some Floridians use Florida cracker proudly to identify families with roots extending back many generations. en.wikipedia.org
- Some Georgians use Georgia cracker proudly to identify families with roots extending back many generations. en.wikipedia.org
- 13The last section of certain whips, a short, thin length of unraveled rope or twisted string tied to the end, which makes the whip's distinctive crack.
- 14Another name for the northern pintail (Anas acuta), a dabbling duck.
Practice
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Origin
Middle English craker meant "a boaster" and was formed from crack, a verb meaning "to break, snap, utter, make a sound," plus -er. The sense of a hard biscuit is first recorded in 1739, and in the 1980s the computing sense was pushed as an alternative to "hacker." Several origins have been proposed for its use for poor white Southerners: corn farmers (corncrackers) who cracked their own crops, Georgia and Florida settlers or plantation slave drivers who cracked whips, or the Elizabethan use of cracker for a braggart, which a letter from 1766 supports.
Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 9 facts
- Middle English craker meant a boaster. en.wiktionary.org
- Cracker was formed from crack, with the stated meanings, plus -er. en.wiktionary.org
- The hard-biscuit sense is first recorded in 1739. en.wiktionary.org
- The computing sense was promoted during the 1980s as an alternative to hacker. en.wiktionary.org
- One proposed Southern origin connects the term with corn farmers cracking their crops. ans-names.pitt.edu
- Another proposed origin connects the term with Georgia and Florida settlers cracking cattle-driving whips. en.wikipedia.org
- A proposed origin connects the term with plantation slave drivers cracking whips. en.wikipedia.org
- Cracker meant a braggart in Elizabethan times. en.wikipedia.org
- A 1766 letter supports the connection between the Southern term and boasting. ulsterscotsacademy.com