Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also love crack) the vagina; thus crack-shop, a brothel.

1680		M. Stevenson Wits Paraphras’d 13: Cry’d, Courage, Wench, holding my back, / My own dear Sister, and my Crack: / That very word brought forth the wonder [i.e. a newborn child], / And made my Haunches fall asunder.
c.1690		News from Morefields n.p.: A Courtier [...] Whose hands to crack did know the right road.
a.1700		Poor Robin in R. Thompson Pepys’ Penny Merriments (1976) 284: The season [...] being indifferent warm, and poor Robin apt for Venerial Exercises, he would needs have a touch upon Cracket with his Wife.
1710		J. Dunton ‘The He-Strumpets’ Athenianism – Project IV 94: Lewd Cracks repent, for ’tis the News, Your Tails have burnt so many Beaus, That now He-Whores are come in Use.
1730		Crafty London Prentice 3: He then her dogg’d near unto Salisbury court, / Where to a crack-shop she did go, to act her wanton part. [...] An to this crack-shop where went he and for a private room did call.
1786		Nunnery Amusements 16: Now upon her back, / In front he takes her charms and luscious crack.
1793		Bacchanalian Mag. 59: When, beneath the Mount of Venus, / Oh! this flea jump’d up her crack!
1826		Pierce Egan’s Life in London 21 May 547/1: The Captain was a fam’d crack shot, and ere he left for Erin, / The Old Hats pigeon-shooting corps, as private did appear in.
1834		‘An Out-And-Out Riddle’ Flash Chaunter 42: It’s known by so many names, and made such a hack, / And lately it’s been called, they say, the funny Magic Crack!
1837–8		‘Sam Swipes’ Cuckold’s Nest 21: The next was a builder, so stout and so rare, / Who heard that her kitchen was out of repair, / He brought his strong tools, and at it went smack, / And shoved a wedge ten inches long, up her ...
1843		Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 28 Jan. n.p.: Chapped lips are very disagreeable. We heard a young lady [...] ask a young man [...] to anoint her crack with some lip-salve [...] but it did not effect a cure; she carries a larger crack than before.
c.1850		Peeping Tom (London) 22 87/1: For when he stopt one crack, d’ye see, / He didn’t make a new one.
c.1864		Rakish Rhymer (1917) 129: I spread her thighs, and opened her crack.
1879		‘Lady Pokingham’ in Pearl 1 July 19: ‘Rub your finger on my crack, just there,’ so she initiated me into the art of frigging in the most tender loving manner.
1888–94		‘Walter’ My Secret Life (1966) I 30: She had scarcely a sign of hair on her cunt, but a vermillion line lay right through her crack. [Ibid.] XI 2280: Relinquishing the little love crack, I got up and put the bottle on the mantel piece.
1889		Dead Bird (Sydney) 10 Aug. 1/1: A broken reputation may be mended, but men will always keep their eyes open on the place where the crack is.
c.1900		‘Ramrod’ Nocturnal Meeting 29: Ethel [...] was only too delighted to get the chance of frigging her dainty crack.
1904		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 16 Nov. 3/6: A simple young thing [...] inspecting the shooters at the Rifle Butts, observed that by the ‘crack of the rifle’ was meant the hole where they put the powder in.
1905–07		Bawdy N.Y. State MS. n.p.: He layed me down on the flat of my back, / And swore that he wanted to open my crack.
c.1930		(ref. to 1868) N. Kimball Amer. Madam (1981) 53: A kind of liquid feeling in my legs and the moisture in my crack.
1945		‘As Boys We Went to School’ in Mess Songs & Rhymes of the RAAF 31: Pretty young maidens they were, they lay upon their backs, / They’d take it in their hands, and lead it right up their [cracks].
1949		(con. c.1900) in Randolph & Legman Ozark Folksongs and Folklore (1992) II 722: Here’s to the crack that never heals, / The longer you rub it the better it feels.
1956		‘Salome’ in ‘Count P. Vicarion’ Bawdy Ballads LX: On a Monday night I shove it up the back; / Tuesday night she takes it in the crack.
1962		B. Jackson Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 205: ‘Is this a drunk or is this a skunk?’ asked Small Crack Nadine with a spike in her thigh.
1973		(con. 1940s–60s) Hogbotel & ffuckes ‘The Ball at Kirriemuir’ in Snatches and Lays 40: Third lady’s finger up the fourth lady’s crack.
1988		D. Woodrell Muscle for the Wing 118: We strip to the crack here.
1992		A. Duff One Night Out Stealing 103: Grabbing a handful of her box (man, at least it’s nice and hairy) and rubbing your mits all overe the hair, then a finger probing for the crack.
2000		N. Barlay Crumple Zone 115: Not exactly a ragga dancehall queen’s batty riders ok, but short shorts, short killer shorts nevertheless, that she’s pulled like right to the crack.

2. (also town-crack) a prostitute; a ‘fallen woman’; modern use is a woman, but usu. in a derog. sense.

1675		Ape-Gentlewoman, or the Character of an Exchange Wench 2: A Town-crack that Kisses for her Bread, and might starve for her Buttocks, is a Saint to her.
1675		T. Duffet Psyche Debauch’d IV iii: The Proverb’s on my side, Fools have Fortune, and Cracks have luck.
1681		Whipping Tom – Brought to Light 2: He meeting with a demure Crack or Miss of the Town [...] so swinged her Tail, that ’tis thought, she will not be capable of her Trade for some considerable time.
1690		Rochester ‘A Satire Against Marriage’ Works (1721) 42: Tho’ she be [...] Close-Stool to VENUS, Nature’s Common-Shore, / Impudent, Foolish, rotten with Disease, / The Sunday-Crack of Suburb ’Prentices.
1705–07		N. Ward Hudibras Redivivus II:3 6: The sinful Premium each poor Crack / Has gladly earn’d upon her Back.
1707		J. Dunton Bumography ii: They can tell us the Vile Practices of the He-Strumpets and Town Cracks.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy II 327: And you low Tire, Cracks, Harridans and Doxies. [Ibid.] V 22: [title] The Crafty Cracks of East Smith-Field, who pick’t up a Master Colour upon Tower-Hill, whom they Plundred of a Purse of Silver, with above Threescore Guineas.
1725		New Canting Dict.
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1973		R. Todasco Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Dirty Words.

3. (UK, London) a narrow passage of houses.

1909

J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 96/2: Crack (London). A narrow passage of houses ; e.g., ‘’Ave yer seen the grand duchess of our crack this blessed mornin’ – gorne to the Cristial Pallis in ’lectric blue – she ’av.’.

4. (also bumcrack, butt crack) the cleft between the buttocks.

1967		W. Manus Mott the Hoople 90: Mott the Yid [...] jumped out of the car, pulling at where his pants met the crack of his buttocks.
1972		O. Hawkins Ghetto Sketches 21: Bam scratches casually but intensively in his crack, and then his crotch.
1986		S. King It (1987) 111: He went downstairs [...] absently picking the seat of his shorts out of the crack of his ass.
1990		T. Winton Human Torpedo 95: Their Levis hung down so far you could see the tops of their bum cracks.
1997		J. Birmingham Tasmanian Babes Fiasco (1998) 211: Three, maybe four inches of buttcrack showing over the top of his jodhpurs.
1998		Hilaire ‘Blind Date’ in Home Suspect Device 2: Fingertips brushed his arse cheeks, then a thick finger was drawn firmly down his crack.
1998		A. Warner Sopranos 244: We bought [...] skimpy wee tops and skirts. So short they’d be up our ass cracks.
2003		N. Griffiths Stump 169: I-have-a-giant-sweaty-smelly-bumcrack.
2009		T. Black Gutted 96: You know cracks . . . must have brown-nosed enough of them.

5. (gay/N.Z. prison, also crack hole ) the anus.

[1838		‘Cupid Turned Housebreaker’ Rambler’s Flash Songster 39: There’s none like cupid, ever yet, that could evade the laws. / With his picklock, and happy cock, could enter in a crack, / It matter’d not to him, whether in the front or back].
1990		Tupper & Wortley Aus. Prison Sl. Gloss. 🌐 Crack. Anus. As in ‘to sell one’s crack’, ie to prostitute one’s self to another prisoner.
2001		D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 47/1: crack hole n. = anus hole.

6. in fig. use of sense 4, i.e. a generic term for one’s body.

1983

(con. 1970) S. Wright Meditations in Green (1985) 23: We got lieutenants falling out of our crack.