cracker
/ˈkrækər/noun, adjective
Something that cracks, breaks, pops, or makes noise
From O.English, via Middle English crack (To make a sharp sound).
Lineage
The story
Picture a medieval speaker hearing a branch snap: that sudden *crack* became Old English *cracian*, a word built to imitate the noise itself. By the Middle English period, a *craker* could be a boaster—a person who “cracked,” or loudly proclaimed, his own greatness—so the word already had a human target before it became a biscuit or a party explosive. The edible sense appeared by 1739, when a hard, dry biscuit earned its name from the crisp sound it made when broken. In the 1980s, computer programmers revived *cracker* for someone who breaks into software or systems, partly to distinguish such intruders from creative “hackers.” Even the controversial American sense for poor white Southerners remains disputed: theories connect it with cracked corn, cattle-driver whips, plantation whips, or the older meaning “boaster.” From a snapping twig to a Christmas table, *cracker* is a little sound-effect word that kept changing costumes.
Modern usage
A derogatory term for a poor or mean white person, especially from Georgia or Florida
- Heard in
- American regional slang · computing
- See
- The computing sense was promoted in the 1980s as an alternative to hacker
Words from the same roots
crack · Old English, via Middle English, ‘To make a sharp sound; break or split’
Derivedcraven, gimcrack, crackdown, firecracker, crackerjack, cracked, cracking
Sources
- Etymonlinecracker, crack, citrus, cracker-jack, firecracker, splendiferous
- Urban Dictionarycracker
- Wiktionarycracker, crack