cracker

Etymology

crack + -er. From crack (verb), the sound made when one is broken. Hard “bread/biscuit” sense first attested in 1739. 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.

noun

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.
   It is customary in every part of China to fire off crackers on the last day and night of the year for the purpose of terrifying expelling the devils. 1911, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 9, page 146
4. A person or thing that cracks, or that cracks a thing (e.g. whip cracker; nutcracker).
   1. The final section of certain whips, which is made of a short, thin piece of unravelled rope and produces a cracking sound.
5. A Christmas cracker.
6. Refinery equipment used to pyrolyse organic feedstocks. If catalyst is used to aid pyrolysis it is informally called a cat-cracker
7. (slang, chiefly Britain, Australia, New Zealand) A fine, great thing or person (crackerjack).
   She's an absolute cracker!
   The show was a cracker!
   A cracker of a day.
   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. January 15, 2011, Saj Chowdhury, “Man City 4 - 3 Wolves”, in BBC
8. An ambitious or hard-working person (i.e. someone who arises at the 'crack' of dawn).
9. (computing) One who cracks (i.e. overcomes) computer software or security restrictions.
   Coordinate term: script kiddie
   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. 1984, Richard Sedric Fox Eells, Peter Raymond Nehemkis, Corporate Intelligence and Espionage: A Blueprint for Executive Decision Making, Macmillan, page 137
   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. 2002, Steve Jones, Encyclopedia of New Media, page 1925
10. (obsolete) A noisy boaster; a swaggering fellow.
11. (US, derogatory, ethnic slur, offensive) An impoverished white person from the southeastern United States, originally associated with Georgia and parts of Florida; (by extension) any white person.
    Brothers and the whiteys / Blacks and the crackers / Police and their backers / They're all political actors 1970, “(Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go”, in Curtis, performed by Curtis Mayfield
    Check this shit: You got cracker farm boy Luke Skywalker, Nazi poster boy, blond hair, blue eyes. And then you got Darth Vader, the blackest brother in the galaxy, Nubian god! 1997, Kevin Smith, Chasing Amy, spoken by Hooper (Dwight Ewell)
    You know that old cracker beat them boys. 2019, Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys, Fleet, page 202
12. (Florida, slang, derogatory) A police officer.
13. A northern pintail, species of dabbling duck.
14. (obsolete) A pair of fluted rolls for grinding caoutchouc.