Crack

How to spell crack

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce crack

What does crack mean?

1. nounA narrow line or gap where something has broken or split without coming fully apart.
2. verbTo break, split, or make a sudden sharp sound.
3. verbTo solve a difficult problem or break through a defence or code.
4. nounAn informal attempt or try at something.

Crack in a sentence

• noun

  A thin crack ran across the windscreen after the stone hit it.

• verb

  A sudden frost can crack an exposed water pipe overnight.

• verb

  The analysts worked all night to crack the encrypted message.

• noun

  She decided to have a crack at the advanced exam this year.

• noun

  Cold air seeped in through a crack in the wall.

• verb

  The dry branch began to crack under his weight.

Where does crack come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from the Old English verb cracian, which meant 'to make a sharp, sudden sound' or 'to resound'. It belongs to a wider Germanic family that includes the Dutch kraken and the German krachen, all of them imitative words coined to echo the very noise they describe, much like 'crackle' and 'crash'. For centuries the core meaning was about sound, and only later did it broaden to mean the splitting or fracturing that often produces such a sharp report. By the medieval period English speakers were using it both for the noise and for the line of breakage left behind, which is how the modern noun for a thin split arose. The informal senses, such as cracking a joke, cracking a code, or having a crack at something, all grew naturally from that idea of a sudden, sharp action. Because the word is so old and so plainly spelt, its spelling has stayed simple and stable, with the only quirk being the doubled c sound written 'ck' at the end.

How the word is built

• crack (single root word of Germanic origin; no prefix or suffix)