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Cranker vs Cracker - What's the difference?

cranker | cracker |

As an adjective cranker

is (crank).

As a noun cracker is

a dry, thin, crispy, and usually salty or savoury biscuit or cracker can be (us|pejorative|racial slur) an impoverished white person from the southeastern united states, originally associated with georgia and parts of florida; by extension: any white person.

cranker

English

Adjective

(head)
  • (crank)

  • crank

    English

    Adjective

    (er)
  • (slang) strange, weird, odd
  • sick; unwell; infirm
  • (nautical, of a ship) Liable to capsize because of poorly stowed cargo or insufficient ballast
  • Full of spirit; brisk; lively; sprightly; overconfident; opinionated.
  • * Udall
  • He who was, a little before, bedrid, was now crank and lusty.
  • * Mrs. Stowe
  • If you strong electioners did not think you were among the elect, you would not be so crank about it.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A bent piece of an axle or shaft, or an attached arm perpendicular, or nearly so, to the end of a shaft or wheel, used to impart a rotation to a wheel or other mechanical device; also used to change circular into reciprocating motion, or reciprocating into circular motion.(rfex)
  • The act of converting power into motion, by turning a crankshaft.
  • Yes, a crank was all it needed to start .
  • (archaic) Any bend, turn, or winding, as of a passage.
  • * (rfdate) Spenser:
  • So many turning cranks these have, so many crooks.
  • (informal) An ill-tempered or nasty person
  • Billy-Bob is a nasty old crank ! He chased my cat away.
  • A twist or turn of the mind; caprice; whim; crotchet; also, a fit of temper or passion.
  • * Carlyle
  • Violent of temper; subject to sudden cranks .
  • (informal, British, dated in US) A person who is considered strange or odd by others. They may behave in unconventional ways.
  • John is a crank because he talks to himself .
  • * 1882 January 14, in Pall Mall Gazette :
  • Persons whom the Americans since Guiteau's trial have begun to designate as ‘cranks’ —that is to say, persons of disordered mind, in whom the itch of notoriety supplies the lack of any higher ambition.
  • (informal) An advocate of a pseudoscience movement.
  • That crank next door thinks he's created cold fusion in his garage.
  • (US, slang) methamphetamine.
  • Danny got abscesses from shooting all that bathtub crank .
  • (rare) A twist or turn in speech; a conceit consisting in a change of the form or meaning of a word.
  • * (rfdate) Milton:
  • Quips, and cranks , and wanton wiles.
  • (obsolete) A sick person; an invalid.
  • * Burton
  • Thou art a counterfeit crank , a cheater.
  • (slang) penis.
  • * 2013 , Reggie Chesterfield, Scoundrel (page 57)
  • It was going to be hard not to blow with a girl like her sucking on his crank .

    Synonyms

    * See also .

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To turn by means of a crank .
  • Motorists had to crank their engine by hand.
  • To turn a crank .
  • He's been cranking all day and yet it refuses to crank.
  • To turn.
  • He's been cranking all day and yet it refuses to crank .
  • To cause to spin via other means, as though turned by a crank.
  • I turn the key and crank the engine; yet it doesn't turn over
    Crank it up!
  • To act in a cranky manner; to behave unreasonably and irritably, especially through complaining.
  • Quit cranking about your spilt milk!
  • To be running at a high level of output or effort.
  • By one hour into the shift, the boys were really cranking .
  • *
  • *
  • *
  • (dated) To run with a winding course; to double; to crook; to wind and turn.
  • * (rfdate) :
  • See how this river comes me cranking in.

    Derived terms

    * crank axle * crank call * crankcase * crank out * crankpin * crank pin * crank shaft * crankstart * crank start * crank up * crank wheel * cranky * turn someone's crank

    cracker

    English

    Etymology 1

    From the verb to crack . Hard "bread/biscuit" sense first attested 1739, though "hard wafer" sense attested 1440. Sense of computer (cracker), (crack), (cracking), were promoted in the 1980s as an alternative to (hacker), by programmers concerned about negative public associations of (hack), . See .

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A dry, thin, crispy, and usually salty or savoury biscuit.
  • A short piece of twisted string tied to the end of a whip that creates the distinctive sound when the whip is thrown or cracked .
  • A firecracker.
  • A person or thing that cracks, or that cracks a thing (e.g. whip cracker; nutcracker).
  • (Perhaps from previous sense.) A native of Florida or Georgia. See
  • (pejorative, ethnic slur) A white person, especially one form the Southeastern United States. Also "white cracker". See
  • A Christmas cracker
  • Refinery equipment used to pyrolyse organic feedstocks. If catalyst is used to aid pyrolysis it is informally called a cat-cracker
  • (chiefly, British) A fine thing or person (crackerjack).
  • She's an absolute cracker'''! The show was a '''cracker !
  • * {{quote-news
  • , year=2011 , date=January 15 , author=Saj Chowdhury , title=Man City 4 - 3 Wolves , work=BBC citation , page= , passage=And just before the interval, Kolarov, who was having one of his better games in a City shirt, fizzed in a cracker from 30 yards which the Wolves stopper unconvincingly pushed behind for a corner. }}
  • An ambitious or hard-working person (i.e. someone who arises at the 'crack' of dawn).
  • (computing) One who cracks (i.e. overcomes) computer software or security restrictions.
  • * 1984 , Richard Sedric Fox Eells, Peter Raymond Nehemkis, Corporate Intelligence and Espionage: A Blueprint for Executive Decision Making , Macmillan, p 137:
  • It stated to one of the company's operators, “The Phantom, the system cracker , strikes again . . . Soon I will zero (expletive deleted) your desks and your backups on System A. I have already cracked your System B.
  • * 2002 , Steve Jones, Encyclopedia of New Media (page 1925)
  • Likewise, early software pirates and "crackers " often used phrases like "information wants to be free" to protest the regulations against the copying of proprietary software packages and computer systems.
  • (obsolete) A noisy boaster; a swaggering fellow.
  • * Shakespeare
  • What cracker is this same that deafs our ears?
  • A northern pintail, species of dabbling duck.
  • (obsolete) A pair of fluted rolls for grinding caoutchouc.
  • (Knight)
    Derived terms
    * crackerless * crackerlike
    Synonyms
    * biscuit * (twisted string on a whip) popper, snapper * (one who defeats software security) black hat hacker * (one who defeats software security) hacker * (white person) honky, wonderbread, whitey

    Etymology 2

    Various theories exists regarding this term's application to poor white Southerners. One theory holds that it originated with disadvantaged corn and wheat farmers ("corncrackers"), who cracked'' their crops rather than taking them to the mill. Another theory asserts that it was applied due to Georgia and Florida settlers (:
    I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas and Georgia, who often change their places of abode." cracker]" in the Online Etymology Dictionary'', Douglas Harper, 2001"[http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-552 cracker" in ''The New Georgia Encyclopedia , John A. Burrison, Georgia State University, 2002

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (US, pejorative, racial slur) An impoverished white person from the southeastern United States, originally associated with Georgia and parts of Florida; by extension: any white person.
  • Synonyms
    * (whites) white trash, trailer trash, redneck, peckerwood, honky, (sometimes ) crack head