# cracker

Pronunciation: US say "KRAK-ur" /ˈkɹækə(ɹ)/; AUS say "KRA-kuh" /ˈkɹækə(ɹ)/

## Noun

1. A crisp, thin baked bread that is dry in texture and usually salty or savory, though some, such as graham and animal crackers, are sweet.
   - Simple: A thin, dry, crisp kind of baked bread, usually salty but sometimes 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._
2. A small firework that explodes with a loud bang; a firecracker.
   - Simple: A small firework that makes a loud bang when it goes off.
   - _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._
3. A person who defeats the protection built into software or gets around computer security restrictions.
   - Simple: A person who breaks the protection on software or gets past computer security.
   - _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._
4. An 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. *(US)*
   - Simple: A rude and insulting name for a poor white person from the southeastern US, or for any white person.
5. A prawn cracker: a light, puffed snack made from starch and prawn and deep-fried until crisp.
   - Simple: A light, crisp fried snack that tastes of prawns.
   - _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._
6. A decorated paper tube that two people pull apart at Christmas, so that it snaps with a bang and releases a small gift.
   - Simple: A paper tube that pops and gives out a small gift when two people pull it at Christmas.
   - _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._
7. A thing or person regarded as excellent or especially impressive. *(slang, Australia, British, Ireland, New Zealand)*
   - Simple: Someone or something that is really great.
   - _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._
8. Refinery 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.
   - Simple: Equipment in a refinery that uses strong heat to break down raw materials such as oil.
   - _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._
9. A person or thing that breaks something, as a nutcracker breaks nuts.
   - Simple: A person or tool that breaks something, the way 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._
12. A 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. *(US)*
   - Simple: A white person from an old Florida or Georgia family of early settlers, a name often used with pride.
   - _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._

## Noun

10. A man who boasts noisily and carries himself with a swagger. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: A loud person who brags and acts in a proud, showy way.
11. A pair of fluted rollers used for grinding caoutchouc, or raw natural rubber. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: A pair of grooved rollers for grinding raw rubber.

## Other meanings

- (noun) The 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.
- (noun) Another name for the northern pintail (Anas acuta), a dabbling duck.

## 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.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/cracker (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).