were did the slang term cracker come from and what does it mean?
345461
one who cracks a whip\n\na slavedriver
6952
You may have read the gossip sweeping the Internet on the origin of the word picnic. Some claim that picnic is derived from lynching parties of blacks. This is incorrect.\n\nInstead, the origin on the word picnic is French (piquenique) and was invented long before the atrocities towards blacks took place in America. This French word - piquenique - signifies an outing with food - similar to the word's meaning in English. At these piqueniques, the attendees would all bring food to the occasion, similar to what we call potlucks today. The outdoor concept of a picnic did not originate until the 19th century.\n\nSo, how did this word originate? We are unsure what the word pique actually means. There are two options: leisurely eating (picking) or a delicacy of food. Nique was selected since it rhymed with Pique.\n\nHistorians have found this French word in references outside of the French language as early as 1748 and into English by around 1800.
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I found this on line,\n\n"Devious Derivations: Popular Misconceptions -- and More than 1,000 True Origins of Common Words and Phrases" by Hugh Rawson (toExcel, Iuniverse.com, 1994, 2000). This reference has some new information on the origins listed here (new information in parenthesis), new origins and what could be the actual origin. \n\n: : 1. Orrin Kendall biscuits, which soldiers ate during the Civil War. \n: : 2. Short for Aux Cayes, a Haitian port that American sailors praised for its rum. \n: : 3. Old Keokuk, a Native American tribal chief who was said to have signed treaties with his initials. \n: : 4. OK stands for "all correct" or the illiterate phrase "Orl Korrect." \n: : 5. U.S. President Martin Van Buren's nickname "Old Kinderhook" -- OK for short. He was a native of Kinderhook, N.Y.\n: : 6. Choctaw word "okeh," (or "hoke") meaning "indeed" (or "It is so.")\n: : 7. Scottish "auch aye", meaning "ah yes." (Or "och aye," meaning "okay.")\n: : 8. From the French maritime phrase "au quai" meaning "at dock", and therefore at last safe from the ravages of the open sea.\n: : 9. '0 killed' - the report of the night's death toll during the First World War. \n: : 10. All clear after the shoot-out at O.K. Corral. \n: : 11. Instruments calibrated at an Observatory at Kew had, affixed to them, a stamp, or impression, to authenticate that calibration. This stamp was O K - Observatory Kew. \n\n: : New origins from Mr. Rawson's book:\n: : 12. The abbreviation is for Oberst Kommandant, German for "Colonel in Command," used by either -- take your pick -- a General Schliessen or Baron von Steuben when initialing letters and orders during the American Revolution.\n: : 13. It comes from the name of a freight agent, Obadiah Kelly, whose initials were widely disseminated on bills of lading.\n: : 14. The abbreviation is for Open Key, popularized by telegraphers in the 1860s.\n: : 15. It comes from the names of Lords Onslow and Kilbracken, who initialed bills after they were read and approved in England's House of Lords. \n: : 16. From a misreading of "Order Recorded" on official documents.\n: : 17. Or from Finnish "oikea," correct.\n: : 18. From the Greek "olla," all, plus "Kalla," good.\n\n: : Professor Allen Walker Read of Columbia University, "finally unveiled its (O.K.'s) origins in a series of magisterial articles in 'American Speech' in 1963 and 1964.What Professor Read discovered was that the abbreviation arose in a humorous manner at a time when Americans were indulging in a great deal of wordplay, including abbreviations, acronyms, puns and intentional mispronunciations and misspellings. The earliest example of O.K. that he unearthed (and it is so far still the oldest known specimen) is from the Boston 'Morning Post' of March 23, 1839. It appears in connection with a note by the paper's editor, Charles Gordon Greene, about a visit to New York of some members of the local Anti-Bell-Ringing Society. (The A.B.R.S., as it was usually known, was itself something of a joke, having been formed the previous year to oppose -- its name to the contrary -- an ordinance of the Boston Common Council against ringing dinner bells.) In an aside, Mr. Greene suggested that if the Bostonians were to return home via Providence, they might be greeted by one of his rivals, the editor of that city's 'Journal,' who 'would have the 'contribution box,' et ceteras, o.k. -- all correct -- and cause the corks to fly, like sparks, upward.'.Thus, it appears that O.K. was invented, possibly by Greene, as an abbreviation of the jocular 'Oll' or perhaps 'Orl korrect,' meaning "All right.' This explanation would seem farfetched, except for Read's finding that it dovetai
369595
It's slang for "damn."
745295
I believe it is from the use of rhyming to emphasise something being great! As in "the bees knees". This then became "the mutt's nuts", which translated into non-rhyming is "the dog's bollocks". WHY? I don't know.
945503
I always thought it meant "Mmmm.....'kay."  Like Hmmm....Okay. Or maybe kinda like what that counselor character on South Park is always saying!
540260
It's an onomatopeic expression used humorously to denote someone grumbling and ranting, and quite often to replace a bout of swearing with something more socially acceptable. It's quite old-fashioned, not really used anymore...
1084593
the word "crack" in old english is used to mean a moment in time.  For example, "I'll be with you in a crack."\n\nThe Crack of Dawn literally means, the exact moment that the sun rises
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It refers to the Jonestown mass murder/suicide in 1978, where hundreds of people were forced into a tent and made to drink poisoned Flavor Aid (though many people believe it was KoolAid).\n\nMany people use the expression to refer to those who blindly follow a leader into a dangerous or lethal situation.
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HEH HEH HEH CRACKER LOL
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banger: British expression: a sausage. \nExample: Bangers and mash is my favorite British meal. \n\nThe rest is obvious.
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The word first appeared in a December 1979 edition of The Los Angeles Times, and entered the Oxford English Dictionary 14 years later. The exact origin of the term is unknown but many believe it relates to some people’s habit of eating potato chips while watching TV.
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We would say "pinch, poke..you owe me a coke"\nI imagine it originated in some play ground somewhere....obviously after coke originated
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phew.... here ya go:\n\n"The Dictionary of Contemporary Slang" by Tony Thorne (1990, originally published by Bloomsbury Publishing). "cakehole, n. British. Mouth. A slang term which was extremely widespread (and considered by many to be vulgar) in the 1950s and 1960s. It survives in the argot of schoolchildren."\n\nIn other words, it came from the British.
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Bloke is rather an interesting word, precisely because you "know it's English." And while bloke is certainly a predominantly English word in current use, it was not always that way.\n\nBloke, which means 'a man; a fellow', is first recorded in England in the 1820s. It first appeared in a glossary by the late 1830s, spelled "bloak" and defined as "a gentleman."\n\nBy the 1850s, bloke had travelled to America, where it appeared in a slang dictionary written by former New York City Chief of Police George W. Matsell, in its usual spelling and defined as "A man." Throughout the late nineteenth century, the word was rather common in American English, first in underworld slang, later in more general use (even Mark Twain used it: "I made up my mind to be a square bloke," he wrote in Life on the Mississippi). It lasted until the 1930s, when it is found in Cab Calloway's signature "Minnie the Moocher" and in writings of Damon Runyon, before fading away. It is now rare in America and is usually regarded as a typical Briticism.\n\nThe origin of bloke is uncertain. It is sometimes attributed to Shelta, a private language, derived in part from Irish Gaelic, spoken by the tinkers (or Travelling People) in Ireland.
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This mainly British colloquial expression is recorded only from the 1960s, but is certainly older. Its origin is uncertain. Some argue it may be from cods, an old term for the testicles that derives from the Anglo-Saxon sense of cod, a bag. It is also suggested that wallop may be connected with the dialect term meaning to chatter or scold (not with the word meaning a heavy blow).\nOne explanation has it that it refers to the late Hiram Codd, who—despite his archetypally American first name—was British, born in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk in 1838. He spent his life working in the soft drinks business. In the 1870s, he designed and patented a method of sealing a glass bottle by means of a ball in its neck, which the pressure of the gas in the fizzy drink forced against a rubber washer. Making the bottle was a technical challenge, since the ball necessarily had to be larger than the diameter of the neck. It was only in 1876, when he teamed up with a Yorkshire glass blower named Ben Rylands, that the answer was found. The Codd bottle was an immediate success; surviving examples are now highly collectable. You opened them by pushing the ball into the neck, and openers in the shape of short, thin cylinders were supplied for the purpose. One unexpected problem was that children smashed the bottles to use the glass balls as marbles.\nThe suggestion is that drinkers who preferred their tipple to have alcohol in it were dismissive of Mr Codd’s soft drinks. As beer was often called wallop, they referred sneeringly to the fizzy drink as Codd’s wallop, and the resulting word later spread its meaning to refer to anything considered to be rubbish.\nThis story reeks of the approach to word history called folk etymology. As one writer has put it, it seems rather too neat an explanation to be true. But nobody’s come up with anything better.
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there are two supposed origins - \n1. is from the word nut, meaning hard seed, which is called "hnutu" in Old English or "*khnut" in Proto-Germanic\n\n2. from earlier be nutts upon "be very fond of" (1785), which is possibly from nuts (noun, plural) "any source of pleasure" (1617), from nut (described above). Sense influenced probably by metaphoric application of nut to "head" (1846, e.g. to be off one's nut "be insane," 1860). Nut "crazy person, crank" is attested from 1903, (British form nutter first attested 1958).