Corn-cracker

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A lower-class white person in the southern US. US, archaic, derogatory, mildly

    "Our summons was answered by its owner, a well-to-do, substantial, middle-aged planter, wearing the ordinary homespun of the district, but evidently of a station in life much above the common "corn-crackers" I had seen at the country meeting-house."

  2. 2
    An agricultural machine for cracking corn kernels. US, archaic

    "A subscriber at Burnsville inquires for a corn cracker which he can work by attaching it to Warren's horse power. There is a corn cracker made here, but it is not a very superior machine."

Example

More examples

"Our summons was answered by its owner, a well-to-do, substantial, middle-aged planter, wearing the ordinary homespun of the district, but evidently of a station in life much above the common "corn-crackers" I had seen at the country meeting-house."

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.