different between biscuit vs crackers

English

Etymology

From earlier bisket, from Middle English besquite, borrowed from Old French bescuit (French biscuit); doublet of biscotti.

Pronunciation

• enPR: b?s'k?t, IPA^(key): /?b?sk?t/
• Rhymes: -?sk?t

Noun

biscuit (countable and uncountable, plural biscuits)

1. (chiefly Britain, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, rare in the US) A small, flat, baked good which is either hard and crisp or else soft but firm; a cookie.
   • 1992 October 3, Edwina Currie, Diary:

     Weighed myself at the gym and have hit 10st 8lb, a sure sign of things getting out of control—so I can’t even console myself with a chocolate biscuit.

2. (chiefly Canada, US) A small, usually soft and flaky bread, generally made with baking soda, which is similar in texture to a scone but which is usually not sweet.
3. (Britain, Philippines) A cracker.

4. (nautical) The "bread" formerly supplied to naval ships, which was made with very little water, kneaded into flat cakes, and slowly baked, and which often became infested with weevils.
5. A form of unglazed earthenware.
6. A light brown colour.

7. (woodworking) A thin oval wafer of wood or other material inserted into mating slots on pieces of material to be joined to provide gluing surface and strength in shear.

   Synonyms: dowel, finger joint, glue strip, spline

8. (US, slang) A plastic card bearing the codes for authorizing a nuclear attack.
9. (US, slang, hiphop) A handgun, especially a revolver.
10. (ice hockey, shuffleboard) A puck (hockey puck).

Usage notes

• In North America, a biscuit is a small, soft baked bread similar to a scone but not sweet. In the United Kingdom, a biscuit is a small, crisp or firm, sweet baked good — the sort of thing which in North America is called a cookie. (Less frequently, British speakers refer to crackers as biscuits.) In North America, even small, layered baked sweets like Oreos are referred to as sandwich cookies, while in the UK, typically only those biscuits which have chocolate chips, nuts, fruit, or other things baked into them are also called cookies.
• Throughout the English-speaking world, thin, crispy, salty or savoury baked breads like these are called crackers, while thin, crispy, sweet baked goods like these and these are wafers.
• Both the US and the UK distinguish crackers, wafers and cookies/biscuits from cakes: the former are generally hard or crisp and become soft when stale, while the latter is generally soft or moist and becomes hard when stale.

Quotations

For quotations using this term, see Citations:biscuit.

Derived terms

Descendants

Translations

See also

French

Etymology

From Old French bescuit, from bescuire, equivalent to bis- +? cuit, or from Medieval Latin biscoctus, from Latin bis (“twice”) coctus (“cooked”). Compare Italian biscotto, Spanish bizcocho, Portuguese biscoito. May be decomposed as bis +? cuit.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bis.k?i/

Noun

biscuit m (plural biscuits)

1. biscuit

Derived terms

Descendants

Further reading

• “biscuit” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Italian

Etymology

Borrowed from French biscuit. Doublet of biscotto.

Noun

biscuit m (invariable)

1. biscuit (white earthenware)
2. wafer (for ice cream)

Anagrams

• cubisti

Romanian

Alternative forms

• biscot (dated)

Etymology

Borrowed from French biscuit. Doublet of pi?cot, which came from Hungarian.

Noun

biscuit m (plural biscui?i)

1. biscuit, cookie
2. biscuit (white earthenware)

Declension

See also

• pi?cot
• pr?jitur?

Further reading

• biscuit in DEX online - Dic?ionare ale limbii române (Dictionaries of the Romanian language)

English

Etymology

See cracker +? -ers. The South African sense derive their name from their sound and their status as a plurale tantum by association with "trousers". The adjectival sense derives from British naval expressions referring to firecrackers in one's head, originally as "he's got the crackers" and then "he's gone crackers" before the present "he is crackers".

Noun

crackers

1. plural of cracker
2. (South Africa, only plural) A kind of noisy leather pants or trousers.
   • 1849, E.E. Napier, Excursions in Southern Africa, Vol. II, p. 13:

     Sheepskin trousers—which, from the sound they make at every movement of the wearer, are called ‘crackers’.

Adjective

crackers (comparative more crackers, superlative most crackers)

1. (Britain, colloquial) Crazy, insane.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:insane

Anagrams

• recracks