The word
crack is derived from the
Middle English crak, meaning "loud conversation, bragging talk". A sense of
crack found in Northern England and Scotland meaning "conversation" or "news" produces expressions such as "What's the crack?", meaning "how are you?" or "have you any news?", similar to "what's up?", "how's it going?", or "what's the word?" in other regions. The context involving "news" and "gossip" originated in
Northern English and
Scots. A book on the speech of Northern England published in 1825 equates
crack with "chat, conversation, news". The term is recorded in Scotland with this sense as far back as the 16th century, with both
Robert Fergusson and
Robert Burns employing it in the 1770s and 1780s. The Scottish song "The Wark o The Weavers", which dates back to the early part of the 19th century, published by David Shaw, who died in 1856, has the opening line "We're a' met thegither here tae sit an tae crack, Wi oor glesses in oor hands...." A collection of folk songs from
Cumberland published in 1865 refers to villagers "enjoying their crack". "Crack" is prominent in
Cumbrian dialect and everyday Cumbrian usage (including the name of an online local newspaper), with the meaning "gossip". A glossary of
Lancashire terms and phrases published in 1869 lists
crack as meaning "chat", as does a book on the local culture of
Edinburgh published in the same year. Glossaries of the dialects of
Yorkshire (1878),
Cheshire (1886), and
Northumberland (1892) equate
crack variously with "conversation", "gossip", and "talk". These senses of the term entered
Hiberno-English from Scots through
Ulster at some point in the mid-20th century and were then borrowed into Irish. or from 1955, "The Duke had been sitting on top of Kelly's gate watching the crack." At this time the word was, in Ireland, associated with Ulster dialects: in 1964 linguist John Braidwood said of the term, "perhaps one of the most seemingly native Ulster words is
crack.... In fact the word is of English and Scots origin." It can frequently be found in the work of 20th century Ulster writers such as
Flann O'Brien (1966) "You say you'd like a joke or two for a bit of crack." and
Brian Friel (1980): "You never saw such crack in your life, boys".
Crack was
borrowed into the
Irish language with the
Gaelicized spelling craic. and was popularised in the
catchphrase Beidh ceol, caint agus craic againn ("We'll have music, chat and craic"), used by
Seán Bán Breathnach for his Irish-language chatshow
SBB ina Shuí, broadcast on
RTÉ from 1976 to 1982. The Irish spelling was soon
reborrowed into English, and is attested in publications from the 1970s and 1980s. However,
The Dubliners' 2006 version adopts the Irish spelling. The title of
Four to the Bar's 1994 concert album,
Craic on the Road, uses the Irish-language spelling as an English-language pun, as does Irish comedian
Dara Ó Briain's 2012 show
Craic Dealer. Now, "craic" is interpreted as a specifically and quintessentially Irish form of fun. The adoption of the Gaelic spelling has reinforced the sense that this is an independent word (
homophone) rather than a separate sense of the original word (
polysemy). Frank McNally of
The Irish Times has said of the word, "[m]ost Irish people now have no idea it's foreign." ==Criticism of spelling==