• Death On A Cracker Meaning Definition
• Saltine Challenge
• Death On A Soda Cracker
• Findadeath Forum
• Saltine Crackers Challenge
• Death On A Cracker Meaning

To look or to feel like “death eating a cracker” is not to look or to feel well at all. Death always looks like death, despite eating a cracker, a cookie, a sandwich, or anything else. The expression “like death eating a cracker” means the same as “like death on toast” and “like death warmed over.”
“Like death eating a cracker” has been cited in print since at least 1949. Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man (1952) included the food variant “looking like death eating a sandwich.” The author Rita Mae Brown has used “like death eating a cracker” in several of her novels. “Like death eating a cracker” has been reported to be a Southern expression, especially in Kentucky.
Wiktionary: like death warmed over
Adjective
like death warmed over (comparative more like death warmed over, superlative most like death warmed over)
1. (simile) Ill, unwell.
Usage notes
. This phrase is usually used with verbs like feel or look.
. The equivalent form like death warmed up exists well.
Urban Dictionary
death eating a cracker
A phrase to describe somebody who looks so vile, dried up and old that they are near death. Because the only thing that is worse then looking like death is looking like death attempting to eat a food that dries you up.
Dude your neighbor looks like death eating a cracker.
by 7fingersphil May 5, 2008
Google Books
A.A. Grapevine
Alcoholics Anonymous
Volume 6
1949
Pg. 31:
... meditation is a fine thing but he can’t see for the life of him why, when a fellow’s meditating, he has to look like death eating crackers. Don K., San Francisco, California.
Google Books
Invisible Man
By Ralph Ellison
New York, NY: Random House
1952
Pg. 562:
And man, that crazy sonofabitch up there on that hoss looking like death eating a sandwich, he reaches down and comes up with a forty-five and starts blazing up at that window— And man, talk about cutting out!
Google Books
The voices of Glory
By Davis Grubb
New York, NY: Scribner
1962
Pg. 185:
It was a face like Death eating a cracker and the smallpox scars I’d had since I was twelve looked deeper than ever.
Google Books
The New Writing in the U.S.A.
Edited by Donald Allen and Robert Creeley
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books
1967
Pg. 112:
You look like death eating a soda cracker.
(The LeRoi Jones play Dutchman—ed.)
Google Books
The Eavesdropper
By Peter Boynton
New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace & World
1969
Pg. 188:
Polson slept under a bush down the road and used Cy’s moving pads as blankets, and looked red-eyed and sharp-nosed, and rough, in the mornings. Like death eating a cracker.
Google Books
Goodnight ladies: a novel
By Babs H. Deal
Garden City, NY: Doubleday
1978
Pg. 106:
“My God,” she said. “I look like death eating a cracker.”
Google Books
Six of One
By Rita Mae Brown
New York, NY: Bantam Books
1999
Pg. 318:
No wonder Louise used to look like death eating a cracker on bad days.
Google Books
Loose Lips
By Rita Mae Brown
New York, NY: Bantam Books
1999
Pg. 72:
I mean, I looked like death eating a cracker and you looked, well, not yourself.”
A Way with Words - Discussion Forum
wordelf
1:10AM
May-07-10
Like death eating a cracker:
Two other phrases come to mind, similar in that they involve food and death, but different in that in these expressions, death is not the eater but the eaten:
1. “You look like death warmed over.”
2. “How do you feel?” “Like death on toast.”
I agree with Elysia that these phrases connote queasiness, or that strange, hollow feeling your stomach may get when you have been deprived of sleep. #2 was a pretty common expression at Valparaiso U. in Indiana when I was there (6 years ago) between people commiserating about staying up way too late writing papers. “Death warmed over” just sounds nauseous– at least, it makes me think of someone using the iffy leftovers that have been languishing in the fridge; by analogy, the person you say this to looks like he or she is but tenuously alive, or like a walking stiff.

Digital timepieces may be changing the way we talk, at least a little. There’s Bob o’clock (8:08), Big o’clock (8:19), and even Pi o’clock. Also this week, what do you call that gesture with your fingers when you want to make an image larger on a multitouch screen? In other words, what is the opposite of a pinch? Does anyone use the expression “fat chance” any more? And do the expressions graveyard shift, saved by the bell, and dead ringer has anything to do with weird Victorian burial practices?

This episode first aired May 1, 2010.

Download the MP3.

Bob O’Clock
As members of the Bob o’clock Facebook group know, the expression “Bob o’clock” means, “It’s 8:08!” The hosts discuss this and other silly ways to tell time inspired by the boxy numbers on a digital clock.

Death On A Cracker Meaning Definition

Unpinch
What’s the word for the gesture you make with your fingers when you want to make an image larger on an iPhone? Unpinch? Fwoop?

Cracker, sometimes white cracker or cracka, is an ethnic epithet directed towards white people, used especially with regard to poor rural whites in the Southern United States.It is sometimes used in a neutral context in reference to a native of Florida or Georgia (see Florida cracker and Georgia cracker). And they take x-rays, but it’s pointless, because whatever is wrong with you 'You've got a bad back, I'm gonna crack your bones.” “You've got diphtheria, I'm gonna crack your bones.” “Your head's come off! I'm gonna crack your bones.” “It looks like your mother! I'm going to crack your bones.

• Two and a half months after bodybuilder Rich Piana died unexpectedly, an autopsy report obtained by Men's Health has ruled the 46-year-old's cause of death 'unknown' due to the number of potential.
• This expression is new to me. It seems from my brief research that it’s from the US (Appalachia) and is sometimes formulated as, “You look like Death eating a cracker”, which is even more bizarre. The similar phrase I am more familiar with is, “You look like death warmed up”. Often these bizarre or amusing idioms are said half jokingly.
• The term has been regarded as offensive for most of its long life on earth, both in Europe and the United States. Lately, over the past fifty years or so, native Floridians and Georgians have used it in a jocular and defensive way to admit to an i.

Saltine Challenge

Quixibar
A Wisconsin man says he learned an expression that sounds like quixibar from his father to describe something confusing or befuddling. But he’s never heard anyone else use it. Is it unique to his family?

Fat Chance
Does anyone use the expression “fat chance” anymore?

Heteronym Word Quiz
Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a puzzle about heteronyms, words that have the same spelling, but different meanings, like “moped” as in “acted glum” and “moped” as in a motorized bike.

A-GoGo
A San Diego caller wonders about the expression a-gogo, as in the name of a local restaurant, Hash House A Go Go. Where’d it come from?

Appalachian Phrase Origin
You look like “death eatin’ a cracker walkin’ backwards.” In Appalachia, this phrase means, “you look terrible.” A caller wants to know its origin.

North vs. Northern
A Dallas listener is struck by the fact that Texans talk about East Texas, North Texas, South Texas, and West Texas. So why, she wonders, do people in other states say things like Southern Indiana and Northern California?

Lexicography Work
Grant talks about his daily work as a lexicographer.

Linguistic Myths Surrounding Taphophobia
A Wellesley College student has been reading about the Victorian fear of being buried alive—also known as taphophobia—and the bizarre 19th-century burial practices associated with it. She’s heard that they gave rise to such expressions as dead ringer, graveyard shift, and saved by the bell. Martha and Grant debunk those linguistic myths.

“E” After Family Names
A listener in Buford, Georgia, says his mother’s maiden name was Barnett, and reports that he was told that the addition of an “e” to a last name was once an indication that the person was descended from slave families.

Death On A Soda Cracker

Turfing
Why do physicians speak of turfing an undesirable patient?

Findadeath Forum

Photo by Idealisms. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Saltine Crackers Challenge

Music Used in the Broadcast

Death On A Cracker Meaning