• Cracker

    Pronunciation

    • enPR: krăk'É™(r), IPA: /ˈkrækÉ™(r)/
    • Rhymes: -ækÉ™(r)

    Origin 1

    From the verb to crack. Hard "bread/biscuit" sense first attested 1739, though "hard wafer" sense attested 1440.

    Sense of computer cracker, crack, 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 .

    Full definition of cracker

    Noun

    cracker

    (plural crackers)
    1. A dry, thin, crispy, and usually salty or savoury biscuit.
    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. (Perhaps from previous sense.) A native of Florida or Georgia. See
    6. (pejorative, ethnic slur) A white person. Also "white cracker". See
    7. A Christmas cracker
    8. Refinery equipment used to pyrolyse organic feedstocks. If catalyst is used to aid pyrolysis it is informally called a cat-cracker
    9. (chiefly British) A fine thing or person (crackerjack).She's an absolute cracker! The show was a cracker!
      • 2011, January 15, Saj Chowdhury, Man City 4 - 3 Wolves, 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.
    10. An ambitious or hard-working person (i.e. someone who arises at the 'crack' of dawn).
    11. (computing) One who cracks (i.e. overcomes) computer software or security restrictions.
      • 1984, Richard Sedric Fox Eells, Peter Raymond Nehemkis, Corporate Intelligence and Espionage: A Blueprint for Executive Decision Making, Macmillan, p 137: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.
      • 2002, Steve Jones, Encyclopedia of New Media (page 1925)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.
    12. (obsolete) A noisy boaster; a swaggering fellow.
      • ShakespeareWhat cracker is this same that deafs our ears?
    13. The pintail duck.
    14. (obsolete) A pair of fluted rolls for grinding caoutchouc.

    Derived terms

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    Origin 2

    Various theories exists regarding this 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_cracker) 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 times to describe braggarts (see crack ("to boast")). An early reference that supports this sense is a letter dated June 27, 1766 from Gavin Cochrane to the :

    I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas and Georgia, who often change their places of abode.

    "cracker" in the Online Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper, 2001

    "cracker" in The New Georgia Encyclopedia, John A. Burrison, Georgia State University, 2002

    Noun

    cracker

    (plural crackers)
    1. (US, pejorative, racial slur) An impoverished white person from the southeastern United States, originally associated with Georgia and parts of Florida; by extension: any white person.

    Synonyms

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