Crackpot

//ˈkɹæk.pɒt// adj, name, noun, slang

adj, name, noun, slang ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An eccentric, crazy or foolish person. informal

    "Time will tell whether he is a crackpot or a genius for promoting that sort of idea."

  2. 2
    a whimsically eccentric person wordnet
  3. 3
    Someone addicted to crack cocaine (i.e. a drug addict). informal
Adjective
  1. 1
    Eccentric or impractical. informal

    "a crackpot idea"

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A small village in Grinton parish, Swaledale, North Yorkshire, England, previously in Richmondshire district (OS grid ref SD9796)

Synonyms

All synonyms
cranknutscrewballbarmyabuseraddict

Antonyms

All antonyms
subtle

Example

More examples

""I can't believe Lyndon LaRouche is still alive." "Who's Lyndon LaRouche?" "A crackpot who was a few decades too early for American politics.""

Etymology

Mostly likely a back-etymology of pot, to form crack + pot. Originally, from crack + pate. Compare typologically Russian чо́кнутый (čóknutyj) (< чо́каться (čókatʹsja), onomatopoeic), see crack for the further typology.

Related phrases

crackpot indexcrack cocainenorth yorkshire

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