Chrysti The Wordsmith: Crack - 2

Greetings This is Christie the wordsmith. It all started with an email from a listener who inquired about the common expression crack shot referring to an accurate excellent marksman. When I subsequently looked up the simple word crack in the Oxford English Dictionary I discovered its dizzying multiplicity of uses. There's a crack up crack down on crack of doom crack of dawn. Not all it's cracked up to be wise crack and the aforementioned crack shot. Well the Oxford English Dictionary tells us that the word crack is a vocal imitation of a sharp sound. Throughout the centuries the term has been applied to the roar of a cannon the sound of thunder and to the blast of a trumpet. It's the latter sounds that inspired Shakespeare to write in his 16 16 play Macbeth of the crack of doom or the sudden sharp report of the Archangels trumpet on Judgment Day. Well with this in mind how can we explain the phrase crack of dog referring to the

soundless moment of sunrise. This expression illustrates an expanded sense of the word cracker which is the moment occupied by a sharp sudden sound that is a split second. So when the sun breaches the eastern horizon it does so in the time it takes for a crack to sound though the moment itself is silent. Crack of dawn first appeared in print in the late 1890s. From Montana State University in Bozeman. This is Christy the wordsmith Christie the wordsmith is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Zoot enterprises a high tech firm in Bozeman Montana offering challenging careers and innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Zoot web dot com.