1. U.S. A contemptuous name for a ‘poor white’ in the Southern States (? from his subsisting on corn or maize); a ‘cracker’: see also quot. 1848.
1837–40. Haliburton, Clockm. (1862), 318. There’s the hoosiers of Indiana, the suckers of Illinois,… and the corn-crackers of Virginia.
1848–60. Bartlett, Dict. Amer., Corn-cracker, the nickname for a native of Kentucky.
1878. N. H. Bishop, Voy. Paper Canoe, 228. That class of … people called in the south—because they subsist largely upon corn—Corn Crackers, or Crackers. These Crackers are the ‘poor white folks’ of the planter.
2. A species of ray-fish, Rhinoptera quadriloba, found on the south-eastern shores of the United States.
