In the late 19th century and the early part of the 20th century, Georgia ranchers came to be known as "Georgia Crackers" by Floridians when they drove their cattle down into the grassy flatlands of central Florida to graze in the winter, stopping where the citrus groves began. In order to get the cattle's attention they became very adept at
cracking a bullwhip. The term "cracker" was in use during
Elizabethan times to describe braggarts. The original root of this is the
Middle English word
crack meaning "entertaining conversation" (One may be said to "crack" a joke; a witty remark is a "wisecrack"). This term and the Gaelic spelling "
craic" are still in use in
Ireland,
Northern Ireland, and
Scotland. It is documented in
Shakespeare's King John (1595): "What cracker is this... that deafes our eares / With this abundance of superfluous breath?" By the 1760s the ruling classes, both in Britain and in the American colonies, applied the term "cracker" to
Scotch-Irish and
English settlers of the remote southern back country, as noted in a passage from a letter to the
Earl of Dartmouth: "I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode." The word was later associated with the cowboys of Georgia and
Florida, many of them descendants of those early frontiersmen. ==Usage==