cracker

Meaning

1. A dry, thin, crispy baked bread (usually salty or savoury, but sometimes sweet, as in the case of graham crackers and animal crackers).
2. A short piece of twisted string tied to the end of a whip that creates the distinctive sound when the whip is thrown or cracked.
3. A firecracker.
4. A person or thing that cracks, or that cracks a thing (e.g. whip cracker; nutcracker).
5. A person or thing that cracks, or that cracks a thing (e.g. whip cracker; nutcracker).
6. A Christmas cracker.
7. Refinery equipment used to pyrolyse organic feedstocks. If catalyst is used to aid pyrolysis it is informally called a cat-cracker
8. (slang) A fine, great thing or person (crackerjack).
9. An ambitious or hard-working person (i.e. someone who arises at the 'crack' of dawn).
10. One who cracks (i.e. overcomes) computer software or security restrictions.
11. (obsolete) A noisy boaster; a swaggering fellow.
12. An impoverished white person from the southeastern United States, originally associated with Georgia and parts of Florida; (by extension) any white person (slang).
13. (slang) A police officer.
14. A northern pintail, species of dabbling duck.
15. (obsolete) A pair of fluted rolls for grinding caoutchouc.

Synonyms

biscuit

firecracker

🧨

hardtack

cookie

🍪

zwieback

cracker bonbon

snapper

breaker

banger

crusher

disintegrator

matzo

matzoth

redneck

rusk

hard biscuit

pilot bread

kibbler

liar

dried crust

matzot

crushing engine

nut

nutcracker

petard

crushing mill

rocket

🚀

cracking still

ship biscuit

sippet

boaster

soaker

soda cracker

sparkler

🎇

squib

wafer

water biscuit

bisque

bisquit

biscuit porcelain

flip-flap

cheek plate

shredder

matsah

matzos

fireworks

🎆

fire-cracker

sea-biscuit

destroyer

cracked still

cyberpunk

firework

fizgig

hacker

braggart

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈkɹækə(ɹ)/

Etymology

From crack + -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.