Meanings
- pluralplural of cracker
- pluralplural onlyslangTesticles.
comparative more crackers · superlative most crackers
- UKcolloquialCrazy, insane.
“I will call up Demons to destroy thee!” “You're crackers,” said Carrot, backing away.
1970, Richard Carpenter, Catweazle, Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, page 282 more examples
He acknowledges that it must seem "a crackers thing to say", but given the substantial progress which has been made in other areas of the business, his optimism isn't without foundation.
2021 May 5, Graeme Pickering, “Managing Metro's morphosis”, in RAIL, number 930, page 52Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser, told the online magazine UnHerd in May that Truss was “as close to properly crackers as anybody I have met in parliament” and would be an “even worse” prime minister than Johnson.
2022 July 30, Dominic Cummings, quotee, “‘Ambition greater than ability’: Liz Truss’s rise from teen Lib Dem to would-be PM”, in The GuardianSynonyms: 5150, bananas, barking, barking mad, fey, buggish, buggy, bughouse
Synonyms & antonyms
adjectiveCrazy, insane.
More synonyms by meaning
adjectiveinformal or slang terms for mentally irregular
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
From cracker + -s. The South African sense is from their sound and its status as a plurale tantum by association with trousers. The adjectival sense derives from British naval expressions referring to firecrackers in one's head, originally as "he's got the crackers" and then "he's gone crackers" before the present "he is crackers".
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
crackers. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/crackers
“crackers.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/crackers. Accessed November 2, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “crackers,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/crackers.
Source: crackers on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.