Word.ws English Dictionary

cracked up

cracked up is the simple past and past participle of crack up.

Meaning of crack up

Verb

crack up (third-person singular simple present cracks up, present participle cracking up, simple past and past participle cracked up)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To laugh heartily.
    • It was hilarious. We were cracking up the whole time.
  2. (idiomatic, transitive) To cause to laugh heartily.
    • The joke about the nuns in the bath cracked me up.
  3. (intransitive, slang) To tease (someone) or tell jokes at the expense of (someone).
    • He's always cracking up at me about that.
  4. (dated, idiomatic, intransitive) To become insane; to suffer a mental breakdown.
    • She got through the war, but cracked up when her sister died.
  5. (idiomatic) To break down or fall apart; to stop functioning; to shatter.
    • The university was really cracking up, losing faculty, students and donors, and it seemed like to go under.
  6. (idiomatic, transitive) To separate a group.
    • I have to crack up that little clique.

See all 14 meanings of crack up

Adjective

cracked up (not comparable)

  1. (archaic, slang) Bankrupt; penniless.

Questions about cracked up

What does cracked up mean?
Cracked up means bankrupt; penniless.
What is cracked up the simple past and past participle of?
Cracked up is the simple past and past participle of crack up.
What part of speech is cracked up?
Cracked up is an adjective.

Words near cracked up in the dictionary

  1. cracked out
  2. cracked someone's egg
  3. cracked the flags
  4. cracked through
  5. cracked tooth syndrome
  6. cracked up
  7. cracked wheat
  8. cracked wise
  9. cracked-out
  10. cracked-wheat
  11. cracked-wheat bread

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cracked up (page history and authors); crack up (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “cracked up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cracked_up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.