crack
/kɹæk/ verb, noun, adjective, proper noun
- verb (intransitive) To form cracks. “It's been so dry, the ground is starting to crack.”
- verb (intransitive) To break apart under force, stress, or pressure. “When I tried to stand on the chair, it cracked.”
- verb (intransitive) To become debilitated by psychological pressure. “Anyone would crack after being hounded like that.”
- verb (intransitive) To break down or yield, especially under interrogation or torture. “When we showed him the pictures of the murder scene, he cracked.”
- verb (intransitive) To make a cracking sound. “The bat cracked with authority and the ball went for six.”
- verb (intransitive, of a voice) To change rapidly in register. “His voice cracked with emotion.”
- verb (intransitive, of a person's voice during puberty) To alternate between high and low register in the process of eventually lowering. “His voice finally cracked when he was fourteen.”
- verb (intransitive) To make a sharply humorous comment. “"I would too, with a face like that," she cracked.”
- noun A thin and usually jagged space opened in a previously solid material. “A large crack had formed in the roadway.”
- noun A narrow opening. “We managed to squeeze through a crack in the rock wall.”
- noun (slang, figurative) A sharply humorous comment; a wisecrack. “I didn't appreciate that crack about my hairstyle.”
- noun (slang, figurative, uncommon) A flaw, weakness, setback, or insecurity.
- noun (slang) Crack cocaine, a potent, relatively cheap, addictive variety of cocaine; often a rock, usually smoked through a crack pipe. “crack head”
- noun (slang, by extension, figurative, humorous) Something pleasurable (good-tasting or appealing) and habit-forming. “kitty crack”
- noun (onomatopoeia) The sharp sound made when solid material breaks. “The crack of the falling branch could be heard for miles.”
- noun (onomatopoeia) Any sharp sound. “The crack of the bat hitting the ball.”
- adjective Highly trained and competent. “Even a crack team of investigators would have trouble solving this case.”
- adjective Excellent, first-rate, superior, top-notch. “She's a crack shot with that rifle.”
- noun (obsolete) One who excels; the best, especially a winning racehorse.
- proper noun A surname
Synonyms
one's egg cracks approach cohabit common company copulate couple engage in sex exchange flesh have intimate relations have marital relations have sex have sexual relations intercourse know know someone in the biblical sense make love mate share a bed sleep together cleft crevice fissure scissure gap cranny chap cracking snap shot
Etymology
From Middle English crakken, craken, from Old English cracian (“to resound, crack”), from Proto-West Germanic *krakōn (“to crack, crackle, shriek”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gerh₂- (“to resound, cry hoarsely”).
Cognate with Scots crak (“to crack”), West Frisian kreakje (“to crack”), Dutch kraken (“to crunch, creak, squeak”), Low German kraken (“to crack”), German krachen (“to crash, crack, creak”), Lithuanian gi̇̀rgžděti (“to creak, squeak”), Old Armenian կարկաչ (karkačʻ), Sanskrit गर्जति (gárjati, “to roar, hum”).
Compare typologically English crevice (<< Latin crepō), Bulgarian пукнатина (puknatina) (akin to пу́кам (púkam)), Russian тре́щина (tréščina) (akin to треск (tresk)), щель (ščelʹ) (akin to щёлкать (ščólkatʹ)).
Slang first attested 1793, perhaps from the verb in the sense of doing something quickly or with intelligence, or in the sense of "speaking boastingly" and having something to be proud of.
Webster’s 1913
- verb To break or burst, with or without entire separation of the parts; as, to crack glass; to crack nuts.
- verb To rend with grief or pain; to affect deeply with sorrow; hence, to disorder; to distract; to craze.
- verb To burst or open in chinks; to break, with or without quite separating into parts.
- verb To be ruined or impaired; to fail. [Collog.]
Etymology [OE. cracken, craken, to crack, break, boast, AS. cracian, cearcian, to crack; akin to D. kraken, G. krachen; cf. Skr. garj to rattle, or perh. of imitative origin. Cf. Crake, Cracknel, Creak.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “crack”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details