• enPR: krăk'ə(r), IPA: /ˈkɹækə(ɹ)/

cracker (plural crackers)

1. A dry, thin, crispy baked bread (usually salty or savoury, but sometimes sweet, as in the case of graham crackers and animal crackers).

   Synonyms: biscuit

   cot en

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.

   Synonyms: popper, snapper

3. A firecracker.
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.

      Synonyms: popper

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, British) A fine thing or person (crackerjack).

   She's an absolute cracker!

   The show was a cracker!

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.

   Synonyms: black-hat hacker, black hat, hacker

   cot en

   • 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.

10. (obsolete) A noisy boaster; a swaggering fellow.
    • c. 1596, William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: Printed by Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358 ↗, [Act II, scene i]:

      What cracker is this same that deafs our ears?

11. (US, derogatory, 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: corn-cracker, honky, peckerwood, redneck, trailer nigger, trailer trash, white trash, whitey, wonderbread, Thesaurus:white person

12. (US, Florida, slang, derogatory) A police officer.
13. A northern pintail, species of dabbling duck.
14. (obsolete) A pair of fluted rolls for grinding caoutchouc.

• crack

• French: cracker, (Quebec) craquelin
• German: Cracker, Kräcker
• Portuguese: bolacha, crocante
• Russian: кре́кер
• Spanish: galleta, galleta de agua

• French: cracker, crackeur, crackeuse
• German: Cracker, Crackerin

• Portuguese: branquelo