Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Resembling or characteristic of the extended informal discussions carried on by persons habitually assembled at a country store: cracker-barrel philosophy.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. characteristic of country life.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. characteristic of country life
Etymologies
- After the cracker barrels that people supposedly would gather round for conversation in old-time general stores. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“With his rumpled clothes and corncob pipe, he was the image of the American cracker-barrel professor eager to mix it up with anyone in a public forum.”
The Wall Street Journal: Paul Goodman: Recounting Forgotten Man on the Attack
“Atticus is a repository of cracker-barrel epigrams.”
“But then I never thought I'd see the day when "To Kill A Mockingbird" --- a novel that has inspired readers for half a century --- would be derided as a book about "the limitations of liberalism" (by Malcolm Gladwell, no less, in The New Yorker, of all places) and "a sugar-coated myth of Alabama's past" with a hero who's "a repository of cracker-barrel epigrams" (by Allen Barra, in the Wall Street Journal)”
“It's a low-key, philosophical musing reminiscent of the voice-over that opens THE BIG LEBOWSKI but played for real rather than as a caricature of the cracker-barrel cowboy spirit-guide vibe you get in the earlier movie.”
“Silly cracker-barrel stuff, mostly, although he had a curious store of half-learned knowledge; Bunyan was a favourite, and he was well up on Napoleon and Caesar and assorted military history.”
“So now Pound was safe, and he became the cracker-barrel philosopher of free verse.”
“He doesn't skimp on the mediagenic Wizard of Menlo Park, beloved for catnaps and cracker-barrel philosophizing about how genius was I percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”
“Antitrust regulations may be impenetrable to laypeople, but cracker-barrel smarts are sufficient to get the nub of the Microsoft problem: in the software business, Bill Gates not only owns the tracks, he sells the trains.”
“That's what happened last week, when Inhofe brought forward his cracker-barrel bill that would make it difficult for people for whom English is a second language to understand critical government forms like court documents and Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) proposed his own measure that would totally neuter the English-only bill if it should pass.”
“Convinced that he's America's cracker-barrel uncle, Rather will never grasp how often his idea of folksiness on the CBS Evening News resembled a mad Klingon taking over for Hal Holbrook in Mark Twain Tonight!”
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