c. 1850, but date uncertain. Broadside Ballad, ‘Bates’ Farm.’ I
mean to crack a crib to-night, but pals don’t crack on me.
To crack a bottle or a quart, verbal phr. (colloquial).—To drink.
Analogous and equally old is ‘to crush a cup.’ Fr., étouffer une
négresse or un enfant de chœur. For synonyms, see Lush.
1598. Shakspeare, II. Henry IV., v., 3, 66. Shal. By the mass,
you’ll crack a quart together.
1711. Spectator. No. 234. He hems after him in the public street,
and they must crack a bottle at the next tavern.
1750. Fielding, Tom Jones, bk. VIII., ch. vii. ‘What,’ says the
wife, ‘you have been tippling with the gentleman! I see.’ ‘Yes,’
answered the husband, ‘we have cracked a bottle together.’
1817. Scott, Rob Roy, ch. viii. ‘You have cracked my silver-mounted
cocoa-nut of sack, and tell me that you cannot sing!’
1853. Thackeray, Barry Lyndon, ch. xvii., p. 221. ‘I chose to
invite the landlords of the ‘Bell’ and the ‘Lion’ to crack a bottle
with me.’
To crack a crib, swag, or ken, verbal phr. (thieves’).—To commit a
burglary; to break into a house. [From crack, to force open, + crib, a
house.]
English Synonyms. To stamp a ken or crib; to work a panny; to jump a
house (also applied to simple robbery without burglary); to do a crack;
to practice the black art; to screw; to bust a crib; to flimp; to buz;
to tool; to wire; to do a ken-crack-lay.
French Synonyms. Faire un cassement de porte (thieves’); faire une
condition (thieves’); faire copeaux (thieves’: in allusion to the
splinters from a forced door); écorner une boutanche or un boucard
(thieves’ = to enter shops burglariously); faire un vol à l’esquinte
(thieves’); maquiller une cambriole (thieves’: maquiller = to do, to
‘fake’—an almost universal verb of action); faire fric-frac; nettoyer
un bocart (thieves’).
German Synonyms. Aufnollen (to ‘burgle’ with skeleton keys); aufplatzen
(literally ‘to wrench’ or ‘break open’); aufschränken (schränken [from
Schranke, O.H.G. screnchan, M.H.G. schranne, schrange, schrand] = a
burglary with violence. Schränker = burglar. Up to the middle of the
present century burglars used to be called Schränker a zierlicher;
Schränkmassematten = a burglary with violence; Schränkzeug,
Schränkschaure, Schränkschurrich = burglars’ tools); blaupfeifen
(Viennese thieves’); Cassne handeln or melochenen (to commit burglary
with open violence); einen Massematten handeln (Massematten is a word
whose Hebraic components very nearly correspond to the English ‘debit
and credit’; it signifies commerce and activity—of the kind that
pertains to cracksmanship; e.g., einen Massematten baldowern, to make
an opportunity for theft; einen Massematten stehen haben, to have
‘dead-lurked’ a crib, or prepared a burglary; Massematten bekoach, a
burglary with violence.)
1830. Bulwer Lytton, Paul Clifford, p. 297, ed. 1854. And you
‘members as now I met Harry and you—there, and I vas all afeard at
you—cause vy? I had never seen you afore and ve vas a going to
crack a swell’s crib.’
1841. Leman Rede, Sixteen-String Jack, Act i., Sc. 5. Jer. Now
comes the grand spec; we go to crack a ken; Kit’s in, so’s the
captain. Steady’s the word; I go first, you all follow.
1871. Standard, 26 Dec. If their pals outside, the gentry who hocus
Jack ashore in the east, pick the pockets of Lord Dundreary in the
west, and crack cribs in the lonely outskirts could only realise
how miserable the Christmas-day was for them, we might look out for
a needful retrenchment in the estimates of penal expenditure.
1871. Morning Advertiser, 11 May. ‘Leader.’ He took to burglary,
employing professional burglars to assist him, whenever it became
necessary to crack a crib.
1887. W. E. Henley, Villon’s Straight Tip. Dead-lurk a crib, or do
a crack.
To crack a judy (or her tea cup), verb. phr. (common).—To deflower a
maid.
To crack a crust, phr. (common).—To rub along in the world. A
superlative for doing very well is, To crack a tidy crust.
1851–61. H. Mayhew, Lon. Lab. and Lon. Poor, vol. III., p. 445. I
am now just managing to crack an honest crust; and while I can do
that I will never thieve more.
To crack a ken, verb. phr. (thieves’).—To commit a burglary; to crack a
crib (q.v.).—[See Crack, verb, sense 2 and Ken.]
To crack a whid, verb. phr. (thieves’).—To talk. [Whid (q.v.) = a word:
Old Cant.] Cf., Cut, verb, sense 1. For synonyms, see Patter.
1876. Hindley, Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack, p. 22. The
whids as the words or set phrases used by Cheap Johns in disposing
of their articles are called are very much alike ... many little
circumstances occur when they (the whids) are being cracked which
are lost to a reader.
To crack on, verb. phr. (common).—To ‘put on speed’; increase one’s
pace.
1835. Haliburton, Clockmaker, 1 S., ch. xi. ‘I shot a wild goose at
River Philip last year, with the rice of Varginny fresh in his
crop; he must have cracked on near about as fast as them other
geese, the British travellers.’
1876. Broadside Ballad [quoted in C. G. Leland’s Captain Jonas]. We
carried away the royal yards, and the stuns’le boom was gone. Says
the skipper, ‘they may go or stand, I’m darned if I don’t crack
on.’
To crack up, verbal phr. (colloquial).—To praise; eulogize. A
superlative is to crack up to the nines. Fr., faire l’article,
(commercial travellers’) and faire son boniment or son petit boniment
(cheap jacks’ and showmen’s).
1843. Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit. Ch. 33 ... We must be cracked up,
said Mr. Chollop, darkly.
1856. Hughes, Tom Brown’s School-days, p. 139. Then don’t object to
my cracking up the old school house, Rugby.
1878. Jas. Payn, By Proxy, ch. i. ‘We find them cracking up the
country they belong to, no matter how absurd may be the boast.’
The crack, or all the crack, phr. (general).—The go (q.v.); ‘the
thing’; the ‘kick’; the general craze of the moment.
In a crack, phr. (colloquial).—Instantaneously; in the twinkling of an
eye. For synonyms, see Bedpost.
1725. Ramsay, Gentle Shepherd, Act i. I trow, when that she saw,
within a crack, She came with a right thieveless errand back.
1763. Foote, Mayor of Garrett, Act i. Nic Goose, the taylor, from
Putney, they say, will be here in a crack.
1819. Byron, Don Juan, ch. i., st. 135. ‘They’re on the stair just
now, and in a crack will all be here.’
1842. Punch, vol. III., p. 136. In a crack the youth and maiden To
a flowery bank did come.
Cracked or Cracked-Up, ppl. adj. phr. (colloquial).—1. Ruined; ‘bust
up’; ‘gone to smash’ or to ‘pot.’ For synonyms, see Dead broke.
1851. H. Mayhew, Lon. Lab. and Lon. Poor, vol. I., p. 2 [also pp.
24, 47]. If a Catholic coster,—there’s only a very few of them—is
cracked up (penniless) he’s often started again, and the others
have a notion that it’s through some chapel fund. Ibid, p. 22. ‘If
we’re cracked up, that is, if we’re forced to go into the Union.’
1870. Britannia, June. ‘Speculation in 1870.’ Of these there only
remain now 122 companies, with a capital of a hundred and eighty
millions, the rest having one and all cracked up, as the Americans
would say.