|
Cracker, sometimes white cracker or cracka, is a derogatory term for white people,〔(Cracker ) Definition from the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary〕 especially poor rural whites in the Southern United States. In reference to a native of Florida or Georgia, however, it is sometimes used in a neutral or positive context or self-descriptively with pride (see Florida cracker and Georgia cracker). ==Etymology== The term "cracker" was in use by the 1760s, specifically applied to the Scots-Irish settlers of the southern backcountry in colonial America. It is probably derived from the verb ''to crack'' used in the sense "to boast" (as in ''not what it's cracked up to be'') in Elizabethan times, documented in Shakespeare's ''King John'' (1595): "What cracker is this same that deafs our ears with this abundance of superfluous breath?"〔 * 〕 This sense of ''cracker'', used to describe loud braggarts, persisted especially in Hiberno-English and it, and its Gaelicized spelling ''craic'', are still in use in Ireland, Scotland and Northern England.〔Dolan, T. P. (2006). ''A Dictionary of Hiberno-English''. Gill & MacMillan. p. 64. ISBN 978-0-7171-4039-8〕 This explanation is given in the earliest recorded reference to the term in the specific meaning under discussion here, in a letter dated 27 June 1766 by one G. Cochrane (in some sources identified as being addressed to the Earl of Dartmouth): The compound ''corn-cracker'' was used of poor white farmers (by 1808), especially of Georgians, but also extended to residents of northern Florida, from the cracked kernels of corn which formed the staple food of this class of people. This possibility is cited in the 1911 edition of ''Encyclopedia Britannica'', but the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' ("cracker", definition 4) says a derivation of the 18th-century simplex ''cracker'' from the 19th-century compound ''corn-cracker'' is doubtful. An alternative derivation proposes the cracking of whips by cattle-drivers, forwarded by Thornton, ''An American Glossary'' (1912)〔, 218-219.〕〔, 210.〕 This is the explanation given in the context of the Florida Cracker Trail by the ''Florida Center for Instructional Technology,'' website (2002).〔(Cattle and Cowboys in Florida ) Florida Center for Instructional Technology College of Education, University of South Florida, 2002.〕 Glossaries of African-American slang of the 1990s record the popular etymology associating the term with bullwhips used to punish African slaves, with such use of the whip being described as "cracking the whip".〔, 100. , 6z1. 〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Cracker (pejorative)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|