Word.ws English Dictionary

cracking a smile

cracking a smile is the present participle and gerund of crack a smile.

Meaning of crack a smile

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To smile, especially while attempting not to.
    • Life is a gamble, we scramble for money
      I might crack a smile, but ain't a damn thing funny1995, Mobb Deep featuring Nas and Raekwon, “Eye for a Eye (Your Beef Is Mines)”, in The Infamous
  2. (idiomatic) To begin to smile.

Questions about cracking a smile

What is cracking a smile the present participle and gerund of?
Cracking a smile is the present participle and gerund of crack a smile.

Words near cracking a smile in the dictionary

  1. cracking
  2. cracking a book
  3. cracking a crust
  4. cracking a fat
  5. cracking a rat
  6. cracking a smile
  7. cracking along
  8. cracking down
  9. cracking hardy
  10. cracking off
  11. cracking on

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cracking a smile (page history and authors); crack a smile (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: “cracking a smile.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cracking_a_smile. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.