Posted on 03/29/2022 5:37:10 AM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
And thus it could mean “excellent”. “Crack” means excellent.
I’ve never bothered much with the etymology or anything, but I heard it was indeed about “cracker barrels” with barrels of crackers as was originally the packaging.
Sounds like typical Yankee virtue-signalling. Never heard such a thing.
That’s an interesting take, thanks.
Etymology — you start with multiple plausible origin stories, and sometimes on further investigation, more than one are correct. Which causes madness.
Following your suggestion a little, I found this: https://www.etymonline.com/word/crack
“crack” meaning “top-notch, superior, excellent, first rate” (as in a crack shot) is slang from 1793, perhaps from earlier verbal sense of “do any thing with quickness or smartness” [Johnson]
So that is almost exactly the years we were talking about the word first being documented, Revolutionary war to 1790. Your idea may be a little anachronistic if Johnson was correct that that sense came in in 1793 and that quote was written during the revolution. OTOH it may have been used in a memoir.
My favorite is the origin of “Uh-huh” (yes), and “Unh-uh” (no). Thought to be from African languages introduced to American/Southern colloquial English by African slaves.
Wow never heard any theories on grunts like “uh huh”. LOL
The quotation noted actually said cracker, not crack, so it could indeed have been either a progenitor of the term “crack” or a version of it, in this case noun vs adjective. That is, if it was written during the war.
That sounds too stupid to be true. Maybe they should focus on the four black teens that dragged a white woman to death after stealing a car.
I could not make out some of what he said, did he actually say he wanted to hang someone?
That term has been around quite awhile
“If I remember right, it’s mostly from the Florida panhandle.”
IIRC I’ve seen that region referred to as “West Florida” and “The Old Southwest”.
Some of the earliest American cowboy country, in the late 1700s. Cattle were set loose to graze in what may have been pine forest then.
“my understanding is that Florida Cracker also refers to an architectural style”
Maybe this:
https://www.pinterest.com/clairemccluskey/florida-cracker-house/
I must have misinterpreted that annotation, Dr. Johnson died in 1784, so that was referring to the earlier sense of sharp (adj), not the later sense and date.
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