Dictionary

cracker-barrel en · ADJ

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.

Meanings

1. (US) Folksy; characteristic of simple small-town people.
   • 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. 2009, William Logan, Our Savage Art: Poetry and the Civil Tongue, page 266:
   • “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. 2015, Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, Carolina Israelite, page 144:
   • 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." 2014, Daniel Mark Epstein, What Lips My Lips Have Kissed:
   • 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. 2004, James Dickey, Donald J. Greiner, Classes on Modern Poets and the Art of Poetry, page 123:

Forms

Synonyms

down-home · homespun

Translations (2)

fr de comptoir (Translations) · fi kansanomainen (Translations)