Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A hard crisp biscuit.
  • noun Crisp bits of fried pork fat; cracklings.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A small, brittle fancy biscuit shaped in a dish; a hard, brittle cake or biscuit.
  • noun plural Small bits of fat pork fried crisp.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A hard brittle cake or biscuit.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A hard, crisp biscuit
  • noun in the plural crackling (fried pork fat)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English crakenele, alteration of Old French craquelin, from Middle Dutch krākelinc, small cake, from krāken, to crack; see gerə- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

French craquelin

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Examples

  • My favorite example of this sort of thing is in Harkavy's Yiddish-English-Hebrew dictionary, which for Yiddish beygl meaning "bagel" gives . . . "cracknel."

    languagehat.com: TITCHY. 2004

  • Dymov hurriedly drank a glass of tea, took a cracknel, and, smiling gently, went to the station.

    The Wife 2004

  • Andreevich, munching a cracknel after emptying his glass.

    Master and Man 2003

  • Little children prefer red sugar-plums to white, and always think it the best "content" which is drunk from a painted cup; but when the dispensation of content and sugar-plums has yielded to maturer age, the man takes his coffee and his cracknel without observing the pattern of the pottery.

    The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 Various

  • When he is gone, Dal Segno's sister Julia, lady's maid to the Princess, enters with birthday-presents for her niece Cornelia, and among the things which attract her attentions sees the cracknel, beside which she finds a note from her own faithless lover Louis.

    The Standard Operaglass Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas Charles Annesley

  • "Yes, it's 'licious," agreed Joan, with her mouth full of cracknel biscuit.

    Two Little Travellers A Story for Girls Frances Browne Arthur

  • In the second act Louis, one of the princely lackeys, brings a large cracknel and huge paper-cornet of sweets for Cornelia, whom he courts and whose favor he hopes in this way to win.

    The Standard Operaglass Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas Charles Annesley

  • How often she baked cracknel, cakes, rolls, and sweet biscuit, and sent great plates full of them to those who could not have such things, for she said, 'May those who pass by and smell the fragrance of my cakes never desire them in vain.'

    Armenian Literature Anonymous

  • On Sundays the mistress would give him a gingerbread or a cracknel, and amuse herself with his baby prattle.

    The French Immortals Series — Complete Various

  • Dymov hurriedly drank a glass of tea, took a cracknel, and, smiling gently, went to the station.

    The Grasshopper 1918

Comments

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  • Per Ernest the story is factual,

    That this is the source of our cracknel:

    You blow up a swine;

    The meat comes out fine –

    The crunchy fat chunks are the shrapnel.

    Find out more about Ernest Bafflewit

    December 24, 2017