Cracker: noun a friend, usually white. What's up crackas? You my cracka. See more words with the same meaning: friend, friends. See more words with the same meaning: hello and other greetings. Summertime alcoholic mixed frozen drink, usually mixed by people at home and sold on the street and by word of mouth. Different flavors include Nutcracker, Finding Nemo, and Spongebob. With a single phrase, Rachel Jeantel, that friend of Trayvon Martin's, may have lit a fuse in the trial of his accused killer.
Story highlights
- Trayvon Martin's friend said he described George Zimmerman as a 'creepy-ass cracker'
- The term injected race into Zimmerman's second-degree murder trial
- 'Cracker' has a murky history but generally describes poor whites
- The slur is widely considered an insult among white southerners
With a single phrase, Rachel Jeantel, that friend of Trayvon Martin's, may have lit a fuse in the trial of his accused killer.
Asked by the defense what Martin told her on the phone that night when he first spotted George Zimmerman, she testified a 'creepy-ass cracker' was following him. There is nothing illegal about that. Jeantel said she didn't even know it was a racial slur, and numerous commentators have noted that some in Florida use the term in a non-derogatory, colloquial sense.
But for plenty of rural, white southerners, 'cracker' is a demeaning, bigoted term, and its appearance does nothing to help the prosecutors.
The origin of cracker is murky. Some sources suggest it came from overseers who commanded slaves. Others say it derives from a Scottish word for boasting. At The Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina, Bill Ferris says it emerged in the 1700s as a descriptive term for drovers who used small whips to move their livestock through the pine barrens along the Gulf of Mexico. 'They were basically poor people. White people. A class of people who were landless.'
Initially, cracker was not a pejorative term, but Ferris says it has become one, the equivalent of redneck. Its meaning and intensity as an insult depends on who is saying it and who is listening. For example, a white who might not object to being called a cracker by another white might consider Martin's use of the phrase offensive and evidence of ill intent.
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In the circumstances described in court, Ferris notes, it was more likely a quick way for Martin to say he was in danger. 'If it is used by blacks (among themselves), it is usually with one meaning: Watch out. He didn't say it to Zimmerman. He said it to convey a message to a friend. He said, 'trouble is coming.'
Still, even if Martin knew precisely what the term meant and said it with all the venom he could muster, does that matter?
Maybe. Under Florida's hate crime laws, Martin's words could potentially have been used against him had he survived the encounter and Zimmerman had taken the worst of it. That may seem far-fetched, but a state handbook advises that a hate crime may have occurred 'if the commission of (a) felony or misdemeanor evidences prejudice based on the race, color, ancestry, ethnicity...'
Cracker Origin Slang In English
Complicating the matter further: Despite suspicions among many case watchers that Zimmerman followed Martin largely because he was African-American, the only mention of race from the defendant in his call to the police that night about a 'suspicious guy' came when he was questioned. 'This guy,' the dispatcher asks, 'is he white, black, or Hispanic?' Zimmerman responds, 'He looks black.'
All of this may seem pointless to people who focus on the central fact of this case: No matter how the conflict began, police say it ended with an armed man killing an unarmed one. The debate over cracker may furthermore seem arcane to people who live north of the Mason-Dixon line, where cracker is seldom heard, and even when it makes an appearance, it is not freighted with decades of history. To be sure, cracker is not on par with the n-word, but it is nonetheless a sharp racial insult that resonates with white southerners even if white northerners don't get it.
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In the circumstances described in court, Ferris notes, it was more likely a quick way for Martin to say he was in danger. 'If it is used by blacks (among themselves), it is usually with one meaning: Watch out. He didn't say it to Zimmerman. He said it to convey a message to a friend. He said, 'trouble is coming.'
Still, even if Martin knew precisely what the term meant and said it with all the venom he could muster, does that matter?
Maybe. Under Florida's hate crime laws, Martin's words could potentially have been used against him had he survived the encounter and Zimmerman had taken the worst of it. That may seem far-fetched, but a state handbook advises that a hate crime may have occurred 'if the commission of (a) felony or misdemeanor evidences prejudice based on the race, color, ancestry, ethnicity...'
Cracker Origin Slang In English
Complicating the matter further: Despite suspicions among many case watchers that Zimmerman followed Martin largely because he was African-American, the only mention of race from the defendant in his call to the police that night about a 'suspicious guy' came when he was questioned. 'This guy,' the dispatcher asks, 'is he white, black, or Hispanic?' Zimmerman responds, 'He looks black.'
All of this may seem pointless to people who focus on the central fact of this case: No matter how the conflict began, police say it ended with an armed man killing an unarmed one. The debate over cracker may furthermore seem arcane to people who live north of the Mason-Dixon line, where cracker is seldom heard, and even when it makes an appearance, it is not freighted with decades of history. To be sure, cracker is not on par with the n-word, but it is nonetheless a sharp racial insult that resonates with white southerners even if white northerners don't get it.
That said, ask Ferris what impact the word will ultimately have on public opinions of this trial, and he is succinct. 'I would say none.' Views of justice, he says, are inextricably linked to racial attitudes. Many blacks will see this trial one way, many whites another way, just as they did in the case of O.J. Simpson.
But the broader public does not matter. What matters is the jury. And it is hard to imagine how it can help the prosecution for those six southern women to know Martin spent some of his final moments uttering a racial insult, no matter what he intended.
- 1English
- 1.3Noun
English[edit]
English Wikipedia has articles on:
Wikipedia English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia A square saltine cracker.
A round cracker.
Unlike most crackers, graham crackers are sweet.
Etymology[edit]
From the verb to crack. Hard 'bread/biscuit' sense first attested 1739, though 'hard wafer' sense attested 1440.
Sense of computer cracker, crack, 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.
English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia Various theories exists regarding this 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')). An early reference that supports this sense is a letter dated June 27, 1766 from Gavin Cochrane to the Earl of Dartmouth:
I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas and Georgia, who often change their places of abode.[1][2]
Pronunciation[edit]
- enPR: krăk'ə(r), IPA(key): /ˈkɹækə(ɹ)/
Audio (AU) - Rhymes: -ækə(ɹ)
Noun[edit]
cracker (pluralcrackers)
- A dry, thin, crispy baked bread (usually salty or savoury, but sometimes sweet, as in the case of graham crackers and animal crackers).
- 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.
- A firecracker.
- A person or thing that cracks, or that cracks a thing (e.g. whip cracker; nutcracker).
- The final section of certain whips, which is made of a short, thin piece of unravelled rope and produces a cracking sound.
- Synonym:popper
- The final section of certain whips, which is made of a short, thin piece of unravelled rope and produces a cracking sound.
- A Christmas cracker.
- Refinery equipment used to pyrolyse organic feedstocks. If catalyst is used to aid pyrolysis it is informally called a cat-cracker
- (slang, chiefly Britain) A fine thing or person (crackerjack).
- She's an absolute cracker! The show was a cracker!
- 2011 January 15, Saj Chowdhury, 'Man City 4 - 3 Wolves', in BBC[1]:
- 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.
- An ambitious or hard-working person (i.e. someone who arises at the 'crack' of dawn).
- (computing) One who cracks (i.e. overcomes) computer software or security restrictions.
- 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.
- 2002, Steve Jones, Encyclopedia of New Media, page 1925:
- 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.
- 1984, Richard Sedric Fox Eells, Peter Raymond Nehemkis, Corporate Intelligence and Espionage: A Blueprint for Executive Decision Making, Macmillan, p 137:
- (obsolete) A noisyboaster; a swaggering fellow.
- Shakespeare
- What cracker is this same that deafs our ears?
- Shakespeare
- (US,derogatory,ethnicslur) An impoverished white person from the southeastern United States, originally associated with Georgia and parts of Florida; (by extension) any white person.
- (US, Florida,slang,derogatory) A police officer.
- A northern pintail, species of dabbling duck.
- (obsolete) A pair of flutedrolls for grindingcaoutchouc.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Knight to this entry?)
Synonyms[edit]
Cracker Origin Slang Lyrics
- (white person):corn-cracker, honky, peckerwood, redneck, trailer nigger, trailer trash, white trash, whitey, wonderbread
- See Thesaurus:white person
- (dry, thin, crispy, bread):biscuit(UK)
- (twisted string on a whip):popper, snapper
- (one who defeats software security):black-hat hacker, black hat, hacker
Coordinate terms[edit]
(dry, thin, crispy, bread):
Derived terms[edit]
Related terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
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References[edit]
- ^ 'cracker' in the Online Etymology Dictionary, Douglas Harper, 2001
- ^ 'cracker' in The New Georgia Encyclopedia, John A. Burrison, Georgia State University, 2002
Retrieved from 'https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=cracker&oldid=54425656'
