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journeyman
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In England is the word "crackers" used to describe a person(or cat in the instance I am referring to) who is thought to be a little "off center"??? I knew a cat named Crackers, who had an unusual personality, to say the least!
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crazy; mad; infatuated [from cracked]
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old hand
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In this context I wonder if any of you use the expression "a cracker" for a lie?
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old hand
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Don't know about 'a cracker' used to mean a lie. If an extraordinarily strange or funny anecdote is related, one might say "That was a cracker!"
The cat being called crackers definitely means it's barmy.
I've heard 'crack' used by the Irish to mean a good time, or a good laugh, I think. The only other word I know which closely fits this meaning is an Austrian term 'Gaudi'. Or could one say 'merriment' perhaps?
'Crack' also means a blow, or wallop, which, I guess is why one says 'Give it a crack mate'.
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Pooh-Bah
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>I've heard 'crack' used by the Irish to mean a good time, or a good laugh, I think.
It is pronounced "crack" but spelt "craic". People in Ireland always seem to be in search of it! Enter "craic" into Google and you may find it!
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Also for natives of Georgia and Florida, mildly pejorative, but less so that "redneck"
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journeyman
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Bill, you are bringing back things I should have thought of, of course I have heard of "Georgia Crackers" but since my mind has turned into sieve I guess that info sifted right on thru! The cat's family could have been from Georgia! I prefer to think they recognized the cat as a bit "barmy"! Not familiar with the "redneck" connotation.
And I live around a lot of them. Good ole boys!
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natives of Georgia
The Atlanta minor league baseball team (before the Braves moved in) was known as the Crackers. The Negro Leagues team was the Black Crackers.
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veteran
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crack / good time
There is the common U.S. usage of "a cracking good time", but don't know if this is related to the Irish expression.
Incidentally, I believe that the use of the term "cracker" to denote a redneck, or uncouth person in general, is considerably more than mildly pejorative. In some circles, at least, it is as bad as the infamous "n....." word commonly used by crackers.
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Would one of our Brit-speak friends explain about the "crackers" mentioned in English books and TV shows as a holiday accoutrement?
wow
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What does it mean when a person is discribed as a "real cracker jack"? I heard this a long time ago.
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There was a popular confection by that name consisting of molasses candy coated popcorn, in a cardboard carton the size of a one pound sugar box. And every box had a small metal casting of animals,etc.,as a prize which made it extra popular with little kids, who used to collect and trade them.
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ohmygosh, bill, i can't believe you remembered that. i never would've recalled those delightful little metal tigers and such had you not posted. Cracker Jacks are still around, but nowadays all you get is some crummy little lick-your-hand-and-stick-it-on tattoo.  can anyone remember any other prizes? i remember them being in a package similar to a bandaid... and have a vague recollection of little brightly-colored jointed plastic animals, kind of two-dimensional. did they ever give out jacks... as in the X X X o X X X game?
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Faldage points out: The Atlanta minor league baseball team (before the Braves moved in) was known as the Crackers. The Negro Leagues team was the Black Crackers.
Beat me to it.... "Black Crackers" being a particularly ironic name (if remembered etymology serves)
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journeyman
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What does it mean when a person is discribed as a "real cracker jack"? I heard this a long time ago.
As I've come across it, it means the person does surprising things. Nutty, crazy... in a kind of tolerated /amusing sort of way. "A real character".
HTH
Ali
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Crackers are festively decorated paper tubes with a twist in the paper about a quarter of the way from each end. There are also two long thin card bands going down the middle joined with some sort of explosive substance at the midpoint so that it makes a bang when you pull them apart; two people do this by each holding on to one of the ends of the paper tube and pulling. The large middle section also contains a paper party hat, a small toy, and an execrable joke or riddle (the worse the better). They're most often used at Christmas dinners or lunches.
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old hand
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I once saw these crackers (also popular in Australia), through the shop window of Harrods, London, for around 80 quid a pop! Imagine if that didn't make a bang!
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Pooh-Bah
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Mr Bingley's description was "perfick". It's a bit out of season but here is some more information: Christmas CrackersThe Christmas cracker was invented in 1847 by Tom Smith, a baker of wedding cakes from Clerkenwell, London. On a trip to Paris in 1840 Smith discovered the "bon-bon," a sugared almond wrapped in a twist of paper. Back in London, his "new" sweets became quite popular. When he noticed that young men were buying them for their sweethearts he began to place love mottoes on small slips of paper inside the wrapping. In 1846, standing at his fireplace, the crackle of a log gave him the flash of inspiration for the cracker. After much experimentation (and burning hands and furniture), he got it right. He pasted small strips of saltpetre to two strips of thin card. As the cards were pulled away from each other, the friction created a crack and a spark. (The concept is still used today.) By 1947, Tom Smith's cracking sweets were the fashion. They were first known as "Cosaques" after the cracking of the Cossack's whips as they rode through Paris during the Franco-Prussian wars. The name stuck for about another decade before simply being known as Christmas crackers. The cracker concept was hot and others were quick to copy Smith's idea. The outer wrapper became the showcase in the fight for market share, with more varied and colourful designs. They were also being sold 12, sometimes 6, in a matching box. It forced Smith to head for the patent office to protect his design, and his company, called the Tom Smith Crackers. By the 1880s, Smith's company produced more than a hundred cracker designs. By 1900, Smith sold more than 13 million crackers. They were being used not just at Christmas, but at just about any festive occasion, including fairs and coronations. In 1933, printed foil wrappers with individual designs were launched. The contents became more complicated, some featuring glass pendants, brooches, bracelets and other jewellery. from http://www.didyouknow.com/xmas/xmascrackers.htmHere's how to make one: http://www.imagitek.com/xmas/crafts/cracker.htmlThis site: http://www.absolutelycrackers.comincludes the following gem: A CHRISTMAS cracker-maker has had to hire a joke checker - because Americans don't get our gags.
The new recruit has to weed out "peculiarly English" jokes after complaints from U.S. distributors.
Gags they didn't get include:
Q: What mint can't you eat? A: The Royal Mint.
Q: Where do policemen live? A: Letsbe Avenue.
Q: Which panto is set in a chemist's shop? A: Puss in Boots.
Boss Keith Langford, 30, of Absolutely Crackers in Milton Keynes, Bucks, said: "We don't want to upset the Americans. We do a lot of business with them."
Published in The Sun (UK)
10 December 1998
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Pooh-Bah
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Sign me up as one the Americans who doesn't get those jokes. Could we have some explanations, please?
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journeyman
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Sign me up as one the Americans who doesn't get those jokes. Could we have some explanations, please?
I think I get the Royal Mint joke, when you take this definition of Mint: 1.A place where the coins of a country are manufactured by --- or: 3.An abundant amount, especially of money.
But as for the others... I can't even pretend to have a clue. I want the answers too!
Ali
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I want the answers too!No. No, you don't. Trust me on this!  The typical English cracker joke makes the humour/work ratio in TEd's longest shaggy dog story seem atrractive   BTW, lovely dragons!
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Pooh-Bah
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Oh no you don't!
Maverick is quite right. Crackers do not have good jokes.
Q: What mint can't you eat? A: The Royal Mint
Yes you are right, the Royal Mint is where money is made.
Q: Where do policemen live? A: Letsbe Avenue
Policeman are supposed to say, "Let's be having you"
Q: Which panto is set in a chemist's shop? A: Puss in Boots
A chemists is a pharmacist. The biggest chain is called Boots. "Puss in Boots" is the name of a pantomime. We discussed pantomimes in another thread. As we said, you didn't miss much!
The interesting thing is that until it was discussed here, I would have had no idea that these were not easily understood jokes, let alone the crackers in which they reside.
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old hand
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>Policeman are supposed to say, "Let's be having you"
Huh? I still don't get it. I mean, I get the wordplay, but I don't understand what a policeman would mean by that. The remedial explanation please... and use small words, if you don't mind. [slobbering lackwit emoticon]
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Pooh-Bah
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Thanks, jmh, for the Cliff Notes. Cultural referents are everything to humor; that's why TV dramas are more readily imported across the pond than are comedies. We'll remake British comedy hits here, keeping the premise but recreating the characters and dialogue, but Masterpiece Theater can lift BBC dramas whole. And the whole planet seems to understand the T & A of "Baywatch." (blech)
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Pooh-Bah
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>Policeman are supposed to say, "Let's be having you"
You know when in a TV Cop show the cops says "You have the right to .... etc, etc etc". In an old UK Police programme like "Dixon of Dock Green" they would have said "Let's be 'avin you", none of that legalese stuff!
It's a jocular way of arresting someone from the days when you could spot a villain from their shifty expession. It means "Come with me to the police station". No great word play, just an expression. The reply would be "It's a fair cop guv, I wus only taking some coal to put on the fire for my starving missus and children". You knew where you stood in those days!
See ... we said it really, really wasn't worth it.
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the T & A of "Baywatch"Guess they don't use 5pt script...
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journeyman
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BTW, lovely dragons!
Thank you!
Ali
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Pooh-Bah
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Per Webster's: A "cracker jack" is a person who does something especially well. It is descended from "crackajack," a rhymed compound from "crack" when used as an adjective for excellent. Per Symbols of America, by Hal Morgan: Cracker Jack, the popcorn and peanut candy, was named from the slang term crackerjack, for excellent, which had entered the language in 1896. The candy was first made by FW Rueckheim, a German immigrant in Chicago, who opened a popcorn stand in 1872. The business first sold Crackerjack at the Columbian Exposition in 1893. It was marketed in the Sears catalogue in 1902, and became part of song lyrics in Take Me Out to the Ballgame in 1908. The little boy in the sailor suit on the package was modeled on Rueckheim's grandson, Robert, and the dog after the boy's dog, Bingo. Robert died of pneumonia soon after the new box with him on it appeared in 1919. Per Charles Funk, in Horse Feathers & Other Curious Words: When used to describe certain residents of the southern US, "Crackers" was derived from a use going back to before 1509, when it described a person given to boasting, tall stories or lying. The term was being applied to ignorant and shiftless people in the southern US by 1766, and evolved into a term which southerners apply to themselves now without necessarily pejorative implications. "Crackpot" comes from the use of "pot" to refer to the head.
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>became part of song lyrics in Take Me Out to the Ballgame in 1908.What are you saying? The song doesn't say "buy me some peanuts and crackers Jack"  [hide in shame and finding out I have been mondegreening this song FOR EVER emoticon]
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>The song doesn't say "buy me some peanuts and crackers Jack"
not only that, but furthermoreover (and in the second place), it doesn't say "buy me some peanuts and cracker jackS"!! at least *you had the rhyme correct. hmmmph...
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Pooh-Bah
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Anyone of a certain age (40±) in the UK will remember, "It's Friday, It's five to five, It's Crackerjack (loud hurrah)". Crackerjack was the children's entertainment show, a fore-runner to so many of today's programmes. It had the essential ingredients, five minutes of fame for every child, slime, quizzes and if you were really lucky you could leave with a Crackerjack pencil and pen (better than a Blue Peter badge in my book). I suspect that most of us thought that the word had been created for the programme and never enquired any further.
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Blue Peter ?!?!?!?!? And you were given a badge for this????? Ohmigawd. I still haven't gotten over that 'keep your p-cker up'!  Are you Brits obsessed with this, or what??? Geez! Oh, my face is on fire!!
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Pooh-Bah
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Oh, Bel, I about choked trying not to laugh too loud thinking about that traditional ballpark treat, the cracker?
Quid pro quo: When I was quite young, I understood the lyrics to Elvis Presley's Return to Sender to include:
We had a quarrel, a rubber smack.
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addict
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Here is a genuine cracker joke that I think can be understood and groaningly appreciated outside of Britain:
"How is an old loaf of bread like a mouse diving into its hole?"
"In that you can see its tail"
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old hand
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> "...you can see its tail"<Sigh> What the world really needs is a better-developed sense of shame for punchlines like that. Ouch.
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There was a monthly magazine in the 70's similar to and in direct competition with "MAD" called "Cracked". I've used the term "crack" often and as my ol' man did to mean a smart-alecky term, and he was quite specific about it! I should know, I was standing on the directrix.
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Speaking of Mad Magazine, one of their catch phrases back when I more or less regularly (Hi, Jackie) read it was :
It's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide.
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stranger
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At Christmas, we have crackers made of paper shaped like a tube with a small strip inside which can be pulled at both ends to produce a BANG like a cap pistol or a fire cracker. Hence the name , I suppose. The paper tube usually also contains a paper hat, a motto/joke, and a little toy. Some are very expensive and the favours inside are quite elegant. Most of us just buy the inexpensive ones as a reminder of times past.
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Blue Peter ... Here's the website,
----------------------------------------
Dear jmh, Went to the site. The music will not play. Up in the BBC corner it says "print only." And although I really really looked I could not find any explanation of the name.
Please tell this poor benighted soul.
wow
I get the naughty bit. It's the show I'm asking about
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Pooh-Bah
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>And although I really really looked I could not find any explanation of the name. blue pe·ter (blû pç'tər) n. Nautical. A blue flag with a white square in the center, flown to signal that a ship is ready to sail (courtesy of Atomica) The programme's logo is a ship in a bottle and the music is the hornpipe. It was the main BBC children's magazine programme for many years and has a very loyal following. It was famous for the things it made, using "sticky back plastic" they never used the tradename "Sellotape" and old breakfast cereal packets Here is a rather typical spoof: http://www.ashtons.demon.co.uk/c1/blue/blue.html
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jmh ... Thank you. Got the full story with music! The theme from "Star Wars."
I can see why it's a hit. I imagine parents enjoy it even more than the children.
wow
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I know I've led a sheltered life (and no doubt the language has changed since I was cryogenically frozen), but what is rude about Blue Peter?
Bingley
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Pooh-Bah
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>I know I've led a sheltered life So have I, Mr Bingley. Apparently on the other side of the pond to where I am now, the name "Peter" is akin to a common abbreviation for William. When something goes blue, it implies that the temperature has dropped and can alert one to a problem (unless in controlled conditions, as you are aware). Biddy Baxter may never recover. [ to WOW for "filling me in" emoticon, to save Jackie's ]
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Careful folks! We be sailing in waters dangerously close to Cap'n Pugwash again. Perhaps this line of inquiry should peter out. Blue Kiwi
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Peter in, climax. Peter out.
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Fiberbabe remonstrates: What the world really needs is a better-developed sense of shame for punchlines like that.
AnnaS solemnly nods her head in agreement.
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"the name "Peter" is akin to a common abbreviation for William"
Please elucidate. What scurrility has been directed at "William" without my knowledge? I have a dirty mind (or so I've been told), but it is unequal to the task of discerning anything risible in the juncture of this pair of names.
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I never said it was good... I said it was genuine
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Dear Marianna: My father would not have caraway seed bread in the house. I did not dare ask if he had eaten some bread that had mouse droppings mixed with the seed.
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How about some unusual uses of comestible crackers? My father very much enjoyed Saltine crackers with vanilla ice cream, and so do I.
My grandmother used to make a delectable holiday dessert from common crackers, which you are unlikely to find in any store today. The kind that used to come in barrels, and the loafers hanging out in the hot stove league would snitch when the owner wasn't looking, and eat with cheddar cheese.There is still a brand of cheese called "Cracker Barrel."
They are about size of the old silver dollar, and thick enough that when readily split into two halves were still thicker than a silver dollar. Grandmother would place the halves concave side up, with a raisin on each one, until a four quart pan was almost full, then cover it with something like eggnog, let it soak over night, then bake at low heat for several hours. Then there was a sauce made from starch, egg white,lemon juice and sugar, with some tricks I never learned.
The result was as good as the plum duff for lack of which whalers would mutiny, according to Richard Henry Dana, author of "Two Years Before The Mast". Incidentally I only recently learned the social significance of that title. Common sailor were quartered in the foreward part of the ship, and the officers in the stern area which was more comfortable.
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old hand
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How about some unusual uses of comestible crackers?
Watch it there, chum. I think we already shot down the food and recipe threads.
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Watch it there, chum.And what makes you think our Bill is shark bait?
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Pooh-Bah
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And speaking of children's shows with interesting names, do any of you outside the US know of Howdy Doody and Captain Kangaroo? The Captain took his name from his sailor jacket, which had huge pockets in the front.
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Unusual use of crackers
The mother of a friend of mine used to make a mock apple pie with Ritz Crackers (British, a small, thin biscuit made with butter, or an imitation, to give it a buttery taste, lightly salted, baked golden brown). I forget what it was made of, the only thing I remember is vinegar, but you soaked the crackers in a liquid, then layered them into a piecrust and topped with a top crust. It tasted very much like apple pie. I have no idea why anyone ever bothered, as it was not cheaper, or less trouble, to make than a real apple pie. I think the only reason anyone made them was to show that it could be done.
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289
veteran
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veteran
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 1,289 |
20-odd years ago, in the course of my employment, I needed to find a way to send goods from the U.S. to St. Pierre & Miquelon. These are two small islands off the east coast of Canada which still belong to France; in fact, they are part of France. I found a shipping line called Blue Peter Line, which sailed thence from Boston.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,156
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,156 |
These are two small islands off the east coast of Canada which still belong to France
I realize, of course, that Newfoundland is part of Canada, but to give your mental maps a hand you may want to know that St. Pierre and Miquelon are more accurately described as being off the coast of Newfoundland. You can get to St. Pierre and Miquelon from here, and we passed them on the ferry on the way to the island when we came last fall. And the French department at my university apparently has some program where you go there and spend a term, to get a feel for France, I guess.
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 771
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 771 |
The name Peter is *also* akin to a common abbreviation for Richard... the "Willie" bit seems to be a little less common here in the US. We prefer our perv-slang monosyllabic, thank you. And try black pepper on vanilla ice cream, Bill. One of my dad's old tricks to gross everyone out when I had friends over. Turns out it's pretty good. Who knew?
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Okay--I watched a show on the History Channel last night about Appalachia, and a guy (I think it was the historian from Johns Hopkins) said that the origin of the word redneck came from when coal miners first began to unionize; I missed the exact date but will guess approx. 1930 based on the vehicles. The ones in unions wore red bandannas around their necks to indicate that they were members.
Now--I thought I remembered us discussing the origin of the word somewhere on here, so I went a-Searching. I didn't find that, but I found this thread, one of the earliest where this word was mentioned, and I resurrected it for the sheer enjoyment of the thing.
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Joined: Dec 2006
Posts: 956
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Dec 2006
Posts: 956 |
I thought the origins were religious. Not sure why or how but I read the scarfs denoted religious attachment.
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
I'd heard the union miners story, too. Dave Wilton does claim a first-cited date of the '30s but a whole nother '30s, so I would say that that story is false. It's an interesting article, well worth a read.
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Thanks, Fool--I just sent off a note to the H. C. about that.
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