Word.ws English Dictionary

crackers

crackers is the plural of cracker.

Noun

crackers pl (plural only)

  1. (South Africa, plural, plural-only) A kind of noisy leather pants or trousers.
    • Sheepskin trousers—which, from the sound they make at every movement of the wearer, are called ‘crackers’.1849, E.E. Napier, Excursions in Southern Africa, volume II, page 13
  2. (plural, plural-only, slang) Testicles.

Meaning of cracker

Noun

cracker (plural crackers)

  1. (obsolete) A noisy boaster; a swaggering fellow.
    • What cracker is this same that deafs our ears?c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
  2. 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
  3. A prawn cracker.
    • There was feasting and joy from Shanghai to the Wall,
      What with dim-sims, chop-suey and crackers and all,
      And the donor of these, by the hook of my crook.
      Was Chiang Ki-Konglong, the Mandarin Cook.1929 February 10, The Sunday Times, Sydney, page 26, column 7
  4. The final section of certain whips, which is made of a short, thin piece of unravelled rope, or which is a short piece of twisted string tied to the end of the whip, which produces a distinctive cracking sound when the whip is cracked.
    Synonyms:
    popper, snapper
  5. A firecracker.
  6. A Christmas cracker.
    • It is customary in every part of China to fire off crackers on the last day and night of the year for the purpose of terrifying expelling the devils.1911, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough, volume 9, page 146

See all 14 meanings of cracker

Adjective

crackers (comparative more crackers, superlative most crackers)

  1. (UK, colloquial) Crazy, insane.
    • “I will call up Demons to destroy thee!” “You're crackers,” said Carrot, backing away.1970, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 28
    • He acknowledges that it must seem "a crackers thing to say", but given the substantial progress which has been made in other areas of the business, his optimism isn't without foundation.2021 May 5, Graeme Pickering, “Managing Metro's morphosis”, in RAIL, number 930, page 52

Synonyms of crackers

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Forms of crackers

comparativemore crackers
superlativemost crackers

Origin of crackers

From cracker + -s. The South African sense is from their sound and its status as a plurale tantum by association with trousers. The adjectival sense derives from British naval expressions referring to firecrackers in one's head, originally as "he's got the crackers" and then "he's gone crackers" before the present "he is crackers".

Phrases with crackers

11 more phrasesFewer phrases

Questions about crackers

What does crackers mean?
Crackers means a kind of noisy leather pants or trousers.
What is crackers the plural of?
Crackers is the plural of cracker.
What part of speech is crackers?
Crackers can be a noun or an adjective.

Words near crackers in the dictionary

  1. crackerjack
  2. crackerjacks
  3. crackerless
  4. crackerlike
  5. crackermeal
  6. crackers
  7. crackery
  8. crackes
  9. crackest
  10. cracketh
  11. crackfic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: crackers (page history and authors); cracker (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.

Last updated:

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