Literary notes about Crack (AI summary)
The word "crack" is deployed in literature with remarkable versatility, shifting between literal and figurative senses. It often conveys suddenness and the sound of rupture—as when a door or a bone splinters with a sharp noise ([1], [2]) or when fissures in walls become an entryway for light or action ([3], [4]). It also carries metaphorical weight, suggesting imminent doom or transformation ([5], [6]), or even offering a turn of phrase that captures wit and irreverence ([7], [8]). At times, authors use it to evoke physical and emotional breaks, whether as the pop of a whip urging movement ([9]) or to signal a fractured state of being ([10]). This multifaceted employment of "crack" enriches narrative imagery and deepens thematic resonance, engaging readers on sensory, symbolic, and humorous levels ([11], [12]).
- Mr. Flea, You have been biting me, And you must die: So he crack'd his bones Upon the stones, And there he let him lie.
— from The Nursery Rhymes of England - The crack of a rifle rang through the woods.
— from The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales by Bret Harte - He lay close and flat near the entrance of his home, just managing to peep through the crack with a bright, alarmed eye.
— from A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett - At the farther end of the room a door opened a crack; a head was thrust in and vanished again hurriedly.
— from The possessed : by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?
— from The Complete Works of William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare - There was nothing left around us, nothing save night and a thin thread of flame in it, as a crack in the wall of a prison.
— from Anthem by Ayn Rand - Old Pop Kipling never said a truer word than when he made that crack about the f. of the s. being more d. than the m.
— from Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse - Jack hitherto had passed in the world for a poor, simple, well-meaning, half-witted, crack-brained fellow.
— from The History of John Bull by John Arbuthnot - Pinocchio obediently bent his two knees to the ground and remained kneeling until the Manager, with the crack of the whip, cried sharply: “Walk!”
— from The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi - If it’s for me, I’m a hard nut to crack; and I take it standing up.
— from Dracula by Bram Stoker - No sooner had he reached the grapevine than—crack!
— from The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi - Feeling something crack beneath our feet, hearing an appalling hiss through the open trap-door, a hiss like the first sound of a rocket!
— from The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
