Word.ws English Dictionary

in a crack

in a crack prepositional phrase: very quickly; without delay.

Prepositional phrase

  1. Very quickly; without delay.
    • "So Dinny, you see, though he was ashamed to make so free wid the lady, still he was afeard not to do as the masther bid him; so, by my conscience, he bowled up to her manfully, an' hild out the fist an' axed her out to dance wid him, an' she gev' him her hand in a crack, an' Dinny whipt her out...1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 517

Origin of in a crack

See crack.

Questions about in a crack

What does in a crack mean?
In a crack means very quickly; without delay.
What part of speech is in a crack?
In a crack is a prepositional phrase.

Words near in a crack in the dictionary

  1. in a bubble
  2. in a canter
  3. in a cleft stick
  4. in a corner
  5. in a couple of shakes
  6. in a crack
  7. in a dither
  8. in a fair way
  9. in a family way
  10. in a few shakes
  11. in a fix

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in a crack (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: “in a crack.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/in_a_crack. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.