cracker

CEFRB1

/ˈkɹækə(ɹ)/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A thin, crisp biscuit, often eaten with cheese.

  2. 02

    noun

    A device or person that breaks into a computer system.

Examples

  • The cracker contains only a gram of fat.

  • Yecch. This rice cracker is soggy.

At a glance

Sits at B1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5
Synonyms
5

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  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 prawn cracker.

  3. A noisy boaster; a swaggering fellow.

More examples

In context

  • Christ on a cracker!

  • The show was a cracker!

  • a lobster and crab shell cracker

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

She spread cheese on a salty blank and ate it as a snack.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

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 m...