cracker-barrel

English

Etymology

Attributive form of cracker barrel. From the image of a group of locals sitting around the cracker barrel in a general store talking together.

Adjective

cracker-barrel (comparative more cracker-barrel, superlative most cracker-barrel)

1. (US) Folksy; characteristic of simple small-town people.

   Synonyms: homespun, down-home

   • 2004, James Dickey, Donald J. Greiner, Classes on Modern Poets and the Art of Poetry, page 123:

     Robert Frost was a nice old New England guy with a lot of cracker-barrel wisdom that the government, somehow or other, saw fit to honor because he read a poem, or something, at the Kennedy inaugural.

   • 2009, William Logan, Our Savage Art: Poetry and the Civil Tongue, page 266:

     One can love these moments, can cherish their invocation of the American sublime (though Wright's notion of the sublime seems closer to the lurid paintings of Bierstadt than to Whitman), and yet dislike the cracker-barrel philosophizing in which they're embedded.

   • 2014, Daniel Mark Epstein, What Lips My Lips Have Kissed:

     The elaboration of this Donne-like metaphysical simile leads her to a cautionary conclusion, which has been praised for nearly a century for its profundity cast in the cracker-barrel tone of the “Down East” porch philosopher: "And he whose soul is flat — the sky/Will cave in on him by and by."

   • 2015, Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, Carolina Israelite, page 144:

     “If there is such a thing as a cracker-barrel philosopher left in our century, Mr. Golden has earned the title,” declared the New York Times.

Alternative forms

• crackerbarrel
• cracker barrel

Translations

Translations

• Finnish: kansanomainen (fi)
• French: de comptoir (fr)

Further reading

• “cracker-barrel”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “cracker-barrel”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “cracker-barrel”, in Collins English Dictionary.