Cracker
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There's a big fuss and furor over the logo change at Cracker Barrel:
Everybody's talking about the design, the graphics, the esthetics, the ethos…, but how about the linguistics?
The cracker2 is gone, but the cracker1 is still there.
(US, derogatory, ethnic slur, offensive) An impoverished white person from the southeastern United States, originally associated with Georgia and parts of Florida; (by extension) any white person (slang).
- Synonyms: corn-cracker, honky, peckerwood, redneck, trailer trash, white trash, whitey, wonderbread; see also Thesaurus:white person
—–
by 1766 as a Southern U.S. derogatory term for "one of an inferior class of white hill-dwellers in some of the southern United States" [Century Dictionary], probably an agent noun from crack (v.) in its sense "to boast" (as in not what it's cracked up to be).
Cracker as "a boaster, a braggart" is attested from mid-15c. ("Schakare, or craker, or booste maker: Jactator, philocompus," in Promptorium Parvulorum, an English-Latin dictionary); also see crack (n.). It also was a colloquial word for "a boast, a lie" (1620s). For sense development, compare Latin crepare "to rattle, crack, creak," with a secondary figurative sense of "boast of, prattle, make ado about." This also was the old explanation of the term:
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. [letter from colonial officer Gavin Cochrane to the Earl of Dartmouth, June 27, 1766]
For an alternative, DARE compares corn-cracker "Kentuckian," also "poor, low-class white farmer of Georgia and North Carolina" (1835, U.S. Midwest colloquial).
The word was used especially of Georgians by 1808, though often extended to residents of northern Florida. Another name in mid-19c. use was sand-hiller "poor white in Georgia or South Carolina."
Not very essentially different is the condition of a class of people living in the pine-barrens nearest the coast [of South Carolina], as described to me by a rice-planter. They seldom have any meat, he said, except they steal hogs, which belong to the planters, or their negroes, and their chief diet is rice and milk. "They are small, gaunt, and cadaverous, and their skin is just the color of the sand-hills they live on. They are quite incapable of applying themselves steadily to any labor, and their habits are very much like those of the old Indians." [Frederick Law Olmsted, "A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States," 1856]
Wikipedia has a whole article on the term, beginning:
Cracker, sometimes cracka or white cracker, is a racial slur directed at white people, used especially with regard to poor rural whites in the Southern United States. Also referred by the euphemistic contraction C-word, it is commonly a pejorative, though is also used in a neutral context, particularly in reference to a native of Florida or Georgia (see Florida cracker and Georgia cracker).
Under the heading "Origin of the term", the article goes through about half a dozen theories for how the term arose, and ends with the one that most common people would probably believe:
Another possibility, which may be a modern folk etymology, supposes that the term derives from "soda cracker", a type of light wheat biscuit that in the Southern US dates back to at least the Civil War. The idea has possibly been influenced by "whitebread", a similar term for white people. "Soda cracker" and even "white soda cracker" have become extended versions of the epithet "cracker."
Under "Meliorative and neutral usage", there are many interesting examples, including this one from On the Origin of Species, where Charles Darwin quotes a Professor Wyman as saying, "One of the 'crackers' (i.e. Virginia squatters) added, 'We select the black members of a litter [of pigs] for raising, as they alone have a good chance of living.'"
Under "Pejorative usage", we read:
In his 1790 memoirs, Benjamin Franklin referred to "a race of runnagates and crackers, equally wild and savage as the Indians" who inhabit the "desert[ed] woods and mountains."


Selected readings
- "Be dank / donk mich" (8/16/20) — beginning and end of the post
- "Georgia cracker" — generally non-pejorative
- "Florida cracker" — generally non-pejorative
Julia said,
August 23, 2025 @ 1:54 pm
Side note about the trademark, via Ai
The original Cracker Barrel trademark was simply the company's name in text only, appearing in the company's first logo in 1969. The now-familiar image of an overall-clad man relaxing by a barrel wasn't added to the logo until 1977, and it remained a core part of the branding until a recent redesign eliminated the figure entirely.
Stephen Goranson said,
August 23, 2025 @ 2:02 pm
I have not looked into this lately, since 2007, but, on the slim chance:
Is this relevant or not for the origin of "cracker jack"?
1870 The Milwaukee Sentinel, (Milwaukee, WI) Thursday, October 06, 1870; Issue
235; page 3, col A. A Cup of Cold Water Category: News [19th C US N]
[col. D]….Chicago has lately seen an Indian half-breed who played at
billiards so well, that he beat even "Cracker Jack," "Pete Snyder," and other
billiard sharps.
1879 Inter Ocean, (Chicago, IL) Friday, October 10, 1879; pg. 5; Issue
163; col
E. Paying the Penalty Execution of McManus, the Molly Maguire?The Crime for
Which He Suffered Category: News [col. F]
Bloomingtin Ill. Oct. 9–Deputy Sheriff Cook arrived from Kansas City this
morning with Jack McKeern, alias "Cracker Jack," who was recently indicted for
highway robbery.
1884 St. Louis Globe-Democrat, (St. Louis, MO) Wednesday, October 15,
1884; pg.
6; Issue 146; col E Murdered by a Mob Two Terrible Crimes Stain
the Annals
of Callaway County Category: News [col. F] ….Jack McKern, a noted
rough, known as "Cracker Jack," was sentenced to one tear in the Penitentiary
for burglary.
1888 The Daily Inter Ocean, (Chicago, IL) Sunday, September 02, 1888; pg. 12;
Issue 165; col A.
Celestials on the Diamond San Francisco Mongolians Wallop the Chicago
Contingent by a Large Majority Category: News
….Then came the slugger, the shot-stop [sic], Wung Fung. He would get eighth
money in a field of nine ordinary, corner-lot, street-gamins, as a
batsman, but he was a "cracker jack" in this class." Lifting the willow, with
that easy grace with which a coal-heaver would handle a billiard-cue, he "lined
her out.
1888ff it spread into horse racing (cf ads-l archives, and stayed in baseball,
and still in billiards:)
1891 The Daily Inter Ocean, (Chicago, IL) Monday, November 23, 1891; pg. 6;
Issue 244; col C
Billiardist Berger Michael Geary on the First Great Ivory Pusher
Category: News
….he was a billiard-player…and a cracker-jack.
1892 Bismarck Daily Tribune, (Bismarck, ND) Tuesday, February 09, 1892; pg. 2;
col A
It seems, according to goosipy newspaper reports, that Congressman Johnson
was not the only gentleman taken in by "Cracker Jack" a noted character about
Washington
1892 Morning Oregonian, (Portland, OR) Sunday, March 20, 1892; pg. 16; Issue 8;
col C
Gossip of Sports The Dudley Medal Contest Today
Category: Sports
Mitchell says he [a boxer] is a cracker jack and thinks he can beat Bogan.
JMGN said,
August 23, 2025 @ 2:25 pm
OED (2nd)
Cracker: http://web.archive.org/web/20200712140645/https://www.oed.com/oed2/00052993
Cracker-barrel: http://web.archive.org/web/20200712140646/https://www.oed.com/oed2/00052994
Crackers: http://web.archive.org/web/20200712140646/https://www.oed.com/oed2/00052997
GeorgeW said,
August 23, 2025 @ 2:40 pm
I know what a cracker person is and what a cracker biscuit is. I had always assumed that Cracker Barrel referred to the latter. I thought it must be something in a country store that contained biscuits.
Terry K. said,
August 23, 2025 @ 3:07 pm
Re the store's name, from https://blog.crackerbarrel.com/whats-in-a-name/
"Soda crackers used to be shipped to old country stores in large wooden barrels to prevent the crackers from breaking apart during the shipping process. Back in the day, country stores were a gathering place for many communities; somewhere folks could catch up on news, local events, and their neighbors’ lives. Sounds like a familiar place, right? So, when barrels were empty, they were used as makeshift tables to hold a checkerboard, a conversation or both. We’d like to think some things never change."
Before today, I'd never wondered about the name.
Victor Mair said,
August 23, 2025 @ 5:46 pm
Of course, the barrel was for shipping crackers. The question is why the man came into the picture for awhile, and now is disappearing.
Victor Mair said,
August 23, 2025 @ 6:20 pm
Note that the guy was an old-timer (i.e., cracker) wearing overalls
cameron said,
August 23, 2025 @ 6:42 pm
in the 1957 film A Face in the Crowd, the TV show that makes the main character, played by Andy Griffith, a national star is called "Lonesome Rhodes' Cracker Barrel". and when he is caught on a hot mic demeaning his audience, he refers to them as "crackers", among other things. the full litany of insults is "rednecks, crackers, hillbillies, houseprouds, shut-ins, pea-pickers…"
Chris Button said,
August 23, 2025 @ 7:43 pm
Why did they lose the distinctive pinto bean shape though?
Laura Morland said,
August 24, 2025 @ 12:50 am
Part I:
Florida Cracker checking in here.
Yes, really! According to Wiki, "[t]he word was later associated with the cattlemen of Georgia and Florida, many of them descendants of those early colonists who had migrated south. A folk etymology suggests that the name instead derives from the cracking of cattle-drovers' whips."
My great-great grandfather was a cattleman and citrus grower who founded the epoynmous town of Parrish, Florida, where I will eventually be buried (although I grew up on the other side of the state).
Back to linguistics: after reading all the comments above, I was relieved to find this Wiki entry, which confirms my own usage:
"Among some Floridians, the term is used as a proud or jocular self-description. Since the huge influx of new residents into Florida in the late 20th and early 21st centuries from the northern United States and from Latin America, the term Florida cracker is used informally by some Floridians to indicate that their families have lived in the state for many generations. It is considered a source of pride to be descended from "frontier people who did not just live but flourished in a time before air conditioning, mosquito repellent, and screens" according to Florida history writer Dana Ste. Claire."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_cracker#Modern_usage
I am not old enough to have lived before the days of screens (horrors!), but I *was* 10 years old before my family had air conditioning.
And for many years I would "jocularly" refer to myself as a Florida cracker. I suppose I stopped in recent years, lest people assume I was politically right-wing. (A few decades ago, the phrase simply meant that you were a native in a state full of recent arrivals.)
Laura Morland said,
August 24, 2025 @ 1:03 am
Part II:
I don't know anyone in Florida who thinks of "Cracker Barrel" as having anything to do Florida or Georgia Crackers (i.e., people) — they assume that it is simply a reference to the barrels used to ship crackers, as delineated above. The man adorns the barrel; he is not the meaning of the logo.
From their website:
"Where did Cracker Barrel get its name?
When our founder, Dan Evins, opened the first Cracker Barrel, he wanted to recreate the experience he loved in country stores from his childhood. Places along interstates and highways that gave travelers a comfortable spot to stop, relax, get a good country meal and feel at home. Crackers used to be delivered to those old country stores in barrels, and people would gather around them to discuss the news of the day—like a water cooler (without the plug.) Since the restaurant was meant to help people reconnect with friends and family over a good meal, it was a fitting name."
From USA Today:
The "Uncle Herschel" character – also known as "the old-timer" – came from sketches during the logo's redesign, which was meant to be nostalgic but not corny, according to the Daily Meal.
"Uncle Herschel" was a real person – Herschel McCartney, uncle of Cracker Barrel founder Dan Evins, was a goodwill ambassador for the company. But that's not him on the logo.
"The logo was created by Nashville designer Bill Holley on a napkin back in 1977 with the goal of creating a feeling of nostalgia with an old-timer wearing overalls," according to Cracker Barrel Insider.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2025/08/22/new-cracker-barrel-logo-rebrand-changes/85774965007/
So the man ("Uncle Herschel") was not intended to be a "Cracker" — it's not a term in use in Tennessee.
J.W. Brewer said,
August 24, 2025 @ 7:52 am
It seems to me a category mistake to assume that a compound noun like "cracker barrel" picks up all the extended metaphorical senses of either/both of its component morphemes. The compound need not even be non-compositional in meaning but simply use one sense (the literal, core sense in this case) of "cracker." Obviously there's a potential for wordplay and the like based on *other* senses of the component morphemes, but if you are immediately reminded of the extended sense rather than the core one, that suggests to me a comparative lack of familiarity with the compound and its referent.
The metaphorical or symbolic sense of "cracker barrel" is quite old. I refer you to e.g. a rather hokey poem of unknown-to-me authorship entitled "The Old Cracker Barrel" (beginning "The old cracker barrel! Each village official / By turns had pre-empted the thing as his throne") which can be found reprinted in e.g. a 1906 issue of the Railroad Trainmen's Journal available in the google books corpus. Consider also the further compound "cracker barrel philosopher." That implies a certain simplicity of affect, but its use in reference to e.g. Benjamin Franklin and Garrison Keillor and even the notably urbane and sophisticated H.L. Mencken (all per a search of google books) does not imply that they are 'crackers" in the sort of ethnic-and-class label sense that the OP focuses on.
Victor Mair said,
August 24, 2025 @ 8:55 am
For the Cracker Barrel spokespersons (and supporters) whose company put an old man in bib overalls sitting on a rattan/splint-seat chair (not a rocking chair in this case, but they do feature the latter on the porches of their store-restaurants) in 1977 and took him out in 2025 to say that it has nothing whatsoever to do with cracker2 is, methinks, being somewhat disingenuous.
As for the removal of the wording "Old Country Store", that was probably done because there are too many of those around, including one down the road in Intercourse PA, plus it is altogether old-fashioned and insufficiently corporate.
The problem with the rush to remake / rebrand Cracker Barrel (founded 1969 in Lebanon TN) into a trendy entity is the same one faced by Starbucks (founded 1971 at Pike Place Market in Seattle). See "AI Overview: bits and pieces (German 'ich' and Starbuck WA)" (10/11/24) for the wholer story.
Nuance (Japanese "nyuansu ニュアンス"), my friends. Shades of meaning.
Once you eviscerate the symbolism of a sign (in the semiotic sense), you are left with the ghost of what once had a soul.
Jerry Packard said,
August 24, 2025 @ 9:05 am
The elephant in the room here is the fact that Cracker Barrel was a defendant in a number of lawsuits that claimed CB was racist in both its targeted customer base and its employment practices. When that occurred, the term Cracker Barrel took on a biting ironic interpretation.
Victor Mair said,
August 24, 2025 @ 9:39 am
Bingo, Jerry!
Bingo!
Bob Ladd said,
August 24, 2025 @ 11:28 am
I was actually more curious about the phrase "a race of runnagates and crackers" in the quote from Benjamin Franklin. Seems likely that "runnagates" could be an eggcorn for "renegades". A brief round of googling suggests that that is probably true, but that the eggcorn version goes back several centuries (it shows up in Shakespeare, and the online Collins dictionary specifically says it's an altered form going back to Middle English "renegat" and refers the reader to the headword "renegade".
jin defang said,
August 24, 2025 @ 12:20 pm
A colleague, born, bred, educated in Miami and a former member of the FL state legislature says that the term Florida cracker has an entirely different origin than Georgia cracker, which does indeed somewhat denote a lower-class Caucasian. He says that the FL term comes from cattle owners cracking their whips to get the cattle moving (hard to believe, but Florida's dairy industry used to be #2 in the state after, I guess, citrus. Now it's tourism and pot.) But I digress. This person is a highly credible source.
cliff arroyo said,
August 24, 2025 @ 1:35 pm
@ Laura Morland
As one Florida Cracker to another, I completely agree with everything you wrote about the use of the word by Florida natives (esp away from the big tourist spots).
I think the current perception of the word in other parts of the country may come from AAVE in which it seems to have become the default despective term for whites joining or replacing older terms like honky or ofay.
@ jin defang
The interior of the peninsula used to have a large cattle industry, not just dairy but also beef with the attendant cowboy culture (I had distant relatives who were part of that as recently as the early 2000s). I have no idea if it's still a thing.
Yves Rehbein said,
August 24, 2025 @ 2:23 pm
@ Bob Ladd, agate (" A semitransparent, uncrystallized silicate mineral and semiprecious stone", Wiktionary), could also be diminutive: "A diminutive person; so called in allusion to the small figures cut in agate for rings and seals". This wording comes from the public domain Webster's Dictionary. The same one spells run'a'gate, and several sources admit an influence of run agate, which I had nearly missed s.v. agate "on the way".
Interestingly, having previously noted Old English āġietan, ā- < *uR-, I happened to notice Dutch her-, which may have been influenced by a northern French er- as a form of re-.
FEW shows that Gallo-Romance "I reneg" (viz. je renie) could have blasphemic connotations and eventually one of chic. https://lecteur-few.atilf.fr/index.php/page/lire/e/216439 Sacrebleu!
There is no rhotic car-warsh **runnergate that I could find, yet I wonder if French renart was influenced by it.
Yves Rehbein said,
August 24, 2025 @ 2:28 pm
For the vessel, cf. crock and German Krug, Krüger, potentially "overman", only later "drinker" (DFD) – thus crack a beer?
Victor Mair said,
August 24, 2025 @ 5:23 pm
We have at least two people on this thread who self-identify as "Florida crackers". Please tell us how you define what a "Florida cracker" is.
cliff arroyo said,
August 24, 2025 @ 5:58 pm
"how you define what a "Florida cracker" is"
My definition is a bit out of date given the mass movement of people to the state.
But… back in the day, "cracker" meant someone born and raised in Florida (especially away from tourist areas) and who felt more affinity for Florida (esp small town/country) Florida than some state up north. Born in Florida but spent a lot of time and/or pining for some northern state =/= cracker. Born in Florida with no particularly positive feeling for any place 'back up north' = cracker.
Usually it's mostly used of whites though I personally didn't necessarily restrict it that way and thought of blacks in the state who met the above requirements as sort of crackers though they probably wouldn't use that designation.
Latinos wouldn't be crackers because they were usually referred to by place of origin (Cubans, Mexicans…).
I left the state before immigration from the rest of the world became endemic (or just as it was starting) so I'm not sure how valid the label is now.
Nat J said,
August 24, 2025 @ 7:24 pm
“C-word”? Really?
Seriously?
Victor Mair said,
August 25, 2025 @ 4:20 am
Yes.
DDeden said,
August 24, 2025 @ 7:44 pm
I'd never heard of Cracker Barrel stores. I misread the initial collision of B & C as a stylized F, and thought it said Fracker Barrel (of oil).
From way up north, but after 10 years in SE Florida, I've been called a cracker many a time, mostly by homies on the streets of Miami.
caneron said,
August 24, 2025 @ 10:03 pm
@cliff arroyo: I'm interested in your use of "endemic", above. do you think you really meant "epidemic", or was there some other word that you confused "endemic" with?
Philip Taylor said,
August 25, 2025 @ 3:48 am
Well, if one considers mass immigration "a disease", then Oxford's first definition would seem indeed appropriate :
Richard Hershberger said,
August 25, 2025 @ 4:25 am
On "Cracker" as a derogatory term, it seems not to be seen that way in Georgia. "Crackers" was the name of the Atlanta minor league baseball team until the Braves moved there in 1966, and there is a current Atlanta Crackers team in the Sunbelt League, a college wood bat league. To really spice things up, there was a negro leagues team the Atlanta Black Crackers on and off through the 1920s and 30s. I suppose this could be a case of reclaiming a derogatory term, but it does not have that feel to me.
Vanya said,
August 25, 2025 @ 7:34 am
I agree with JWB. The logo was changed because the Company is in financial jeopardy and is desperately trying to attract younger and more diverse clientele. The demographic they are trying to attract are people who for the most part have no memory of "cracker" as a derogatory slur. I doubt a fading folk memory of cracker2 played any role in the logo change. Clearly the marketing team just felt "old man" doesn't play well with the new sleek image the chain wants to project. Simplifying older logos to achieve a clean and abstract "modern" (and unmemorable) look has been a depressing marketing trend for at least a decade. At least they didn't rename the chain "The Crax" or something equally stupid.
On top of which, the kindly and intelligent looking old white man in overalls doesn't even fit the image of a "cracker" in the derogatory sense that word was used by my black peers in DC when I was growing up. A stereotypical "cracker" would look a lot more like Luke Combs or Billy Ray Cyrus.
Stephen Goranson said,
August 25, 2025 @ 8:25 am
Soda cracker meaning white folk, I've encountered. Soda crackers, often served with soup, if not eaten right away, fast go stale. A barrel full of those crackers seems inefficient. A barrel on an old sailing ship kept unloved hardtack, which I guess lasted somewhat longer.
Rodger C said,
August 25, 2025 @ 10:07 am
DDeden: May you inspire a satirical logo for Fracker Barrel.
Brett said,
August 25, 2025 @ 12:30 pm
In Strawberry Girl (1945), Lois Lenski gives the folk etymology related to cattle driving.
J.W. Brewer said,
August 25, 2025 @ 1:30 pm
For the derogatory use of "cracker," one complication (sort of suggested by Vanya's comment) is that one of the great demographic shifts of the 20th century in the U.S. was the so-called "Great Migration of millions of black Americans from the rural South to the urban North, bringing their vocabulary with them, meaning that in some instances "cracker" began to be applied pejoratively to white people who were neither rural nor Southern, with an extreme example recounted by wikipedia being the use of "cracker" as a derogatory epithet applied to the late Pope John Paul II. By contrast, I think "cracker" in the mouths of white Americans using it as a derogatory reference to other white Americans has maintained the southern-and-rural specificity.
This is another contrast with "cracker barrel" the symbolic object and "Cracker Barrel" the chain, which to me are coded as rural/small-town, but *not* as specifically Southern but as equally consistent with a mythologized version of long-ago northeastern or midwestern virtuous-but-simple small-town life, e.g. the fictionalized Centerburg, Ohio where the Homer Price stories are set.
I am not a particularly regular patron of the Cracker Barrel chain, but FWIW their only location I have (as best as I can recall) patronized multiple times is the one in Sturbridge, Mass., which is right across the state line from, and culturally near-identical to, the "swamp Yankee" region of rural northeastern Connecticut where our host Mark Liberman grew up. (This location is just off I-84 a few miles south of where it runs into the Mass. Pike, and thus a convenient stop when driving between the NYC area and the Boston area.)