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Cracking   /krˈækɪŋ/   Listen
verb
Crack  v. t.  (past & past part. cracked; pres. part. cracking)  
1.
To break or burst, with or without entire separation of the parts; as, to crack glass; to crack nuts.
2.
To rend with grief or pain; to affect deeply with sorrow; hence, to disorder; to distract; to craze. "O, madam, my old heart is cracked." "He thought none poets till their brains were cracked."
3.
To cause to sound suddenly and sharply; to snap; as, to crack a whip.
4.
To utter smartly and sententiously; as, to crack a joke.
5.
To cry up; to extol; followed by up. (Low)
To crack a bottle, to open the bottle and drink its contents.
To crack a crib, to commit burglary. (Slang)
To crack on, to put on; as, to crack on more sail, or more steam. (Colloq.)



Crack  v. i.  
1.
To burst or open in chinks; to break, with or without quite separating into parts. "By misfortune it cracked in the coling." "The mirror cracked from side to side."
2.
To be ruined or impaired; to fail. (Collog.) "The credit... of exchequers cracks, when little comes in and much goes out."
3.
To utter a loud or sharp, sudden sound. "As thunder when the clouds in autumn crack."
4.
To utter vain, pompous words; to brag; to boast; with of. (Archaic.) "Ethoipes of their sweet complexion crack."



adjective
cracking  adj.  Same as groovy, sense 1. (informal)
Synonyms: bang-up, bully, cool, corking, dandy, great, groovy, keen, neat, nifty, not bad(predicate), peachy, slap-up, swell, smashing.



noun
cracking  n.  
1.
The act of cracking something.
Synonyms: fracture, crack.
2.
(Chem.) The process of making lower molecular weight hydrocarbons from heavier hydrocarbons in petroleum, by exposure to heat and catalysts. It is used to convert heavier alkanes into gasoline, or to improve the octane number of an alkane mixture.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Cracking" Quotes from Famous Books



... the scenery at the left upper entrance and charged excitedly down the stage. Having taken his musicians twice through the overture, he had for ten minutes been sitting in silence, waiting for the curtain to go up. At last, his emotional nature cracking under the strain of this suspense, he had left his conductor's chair and plunged down under the stage by way of the musician's bolthole to ascertain what ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... face. In the silence and peace of the temple she had plunged reckless hands into the woven threads of his life. Amidst the shriek of war, face to face with death, she sought to save him. It was another woman who stood opposite the yielding, cracking door, past whose head a half-spent bullet spat its way, burying itself in the wall behind her,—another woman, disheveled, forgetful of her wan beauty, trusting to no power but that which her heart gave her to face the man she had betrayed ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... dug his spurs into his horse and cantered, elbows flapping, broad-brimmed hat drawn over his eyes. For hours he had been fighting the demon of thirst. His tongue was dry, his lips cracking. The trail continued to be marked with its double stones, but it did not enter the cool canyon ahead. It turned and skirted the base of the bare mountain slope. The man's eyes sharpened. He knew very definitely what he was looking for, and at last he ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... notes were not long wanting to complete the infernal chorus. From the dense, dark forest came the blood-curdling roars of tigers, panthers, and bears mingled with the loud bellowing and heavy stampede of elephants; we could distinctly here the cracking of boughs hurled to the ground in their furious course, and the crashing of bamboo, which with them is a favourite food. One might have said that an immense legion of demons had invaded the forest, because ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti

... that slope up from the bank of the river are dented and broken as if some giant in the past had smashed them with his hammer, cracking some and punching deep holes in others. It was in one of these holes, or caves, that ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh


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