cracker
Meanings
Plural: crackers
Noun
- a thin crisp wafer made of flour and water with or without leavening and shortening; unsweetened or semisweet
- a poor White person in the southern United States
- a programmer who cracks (gains unauthorized access to) computers, typically to do malicious things
- "crackers are often mistakenly called hackers"
- firework consisting of a small explosive charge and fuse in a heavy paper casing
- a party favor consisting of a paper roll (usually containing candy or a small favor) that pops when pulled at both ends
- A noisy boaster; a swaggering fellow.
- A dry, thin, crispy baked bread (usually salty or savoury, but sometimes sweet, as in the case of graham crackers and animal crackers).
- A prawn cracker.
- The final section of certain whips, which is made of a short, thin piece of unravelled rope, or which is a short piece of twisted string tied to the end of the whip, which produces a distinctive cracking sound when the whip is cracked.
- A firecracker.
- A Christmas cracker.
- A northern pintail, a dabbling duck of species Anas acuta.
- A person or thing that breaks a thing (e.g., nutcracker).
- Refinery equipment used to pyrolyse organic feedstocks. If catalyst is used to aid pyrolysis it is informally called a cat-cracker
- A person or thing that breaks a thing (e.g., nutcracker).
- A pair of fluted rolls for grinding caoutchouc.
- A person or thing that breaks a thing (e.g., nutcracker).
- One who cracks (i.e. overcomes) computer software or security restrictions.
- A person or thing that breaks a thing (e.g., nutcracker).
- A fine, great thing or person (crackerjack).
- An ambitious or hard-working person (i.e. someone who arises at the 'crack' of dawn).
- An impoverished white person from the southeastern United States, originally associated with Georgia and parts of Florida; (by extension) any white person (slang).
Origin / Etymology
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. 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.
Synonyms
ang moh, Angrez, balanda, banger, biscuit, black hat, bule, béké, Caucasian, corn-cracker, cracker, cracker bonbon, cumskin, farang, firangi, firecracker, gora, gringo, gussuk, gweilo, hacker, haole, honky, hoogie, hoojah, ice monkey, ivory, joganosh, kabloona, laowai, leucoderm, mayo, mayonnaise face, melanin-challenged, migaloo, mlungu, mzungu, ofay, oyinbo, paddy, Pakeha, paleface, peckerwood, pigskin, pinky, popper, redneck, roundeye, saltine, snapper, snow bunny, toubab, trailer trash, umlungu, vazaha, white, white bread, white devil, white man, white trash, whiteface, whitey, wigger, wonderbread, Yankee
Scrabble Score: 15
cracker is a valid Scrabble (US) TWL wordcracker is a valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
cracker is a valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary