Green’s Dictionary of Slang

making or pertaining to smart retorts.

1911		G. Bronson-Howard Enemy to Society 331: I’ll watch out for the ‘wise-cracking’ stuff.
1923		O.O. McIntyre ‘New York Day by Day’ 25 Sept. [synd. col.] A crew of wise-cracking vulgarians who were representative of the days when Broadway drank its liquor straight.
1929		J. Lait Broadway Melody 4: Some wise-cracking commentator once released a wheeze to the effect that he didn’t care much who wrote a nation’s laws if he could write the nation’s songs.
1951		S. Lewis World So Wide 186: It’ll first of all want heroes and not a gang of statisticians and wisecracking critics.
1965		G. Melly Owning Up (1974) 22: They [...] [were] more able to mask their feelings behind a wisecracking cynicism.
2002		J. Ridley Conversation with the Mann 27: I was very quickly becoming the target of every wise-cracking kid there was.