crackling
Americannoun
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the making of slight cracking sounds rapidly repeated.
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the crisp browned skin or rind of roast pork.
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Southern U.S. Usually cracklings. the crisp residue left when fat, especially hog or chicken fat, is rendered.
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of crackling
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Wisps of smoke rose from charred or crackling tree trunks between Le Porge and the village of Lege-Cap-Ferret to the south, AFP journalists said.
From Barron's ● Jul. 23, 2026
Steak leans into its vintage charm with dark lighting, a crackling fireplace and a distinctly romantic atmosphere.
From Salon ● Jun. 11, 2026
The distress channel of his maritime radio was crackling with the pleas of seafarers among the 20,000 still stranded on cargo ships and tankers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 9, 2026
Over the radio, Bing Crosby is crooning, Bob Hope is joking, and news of the war — against Hitler, against Japan — keeps sizzling and crackling across the dial.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 26, 2026
They stay like this for some time, alongside the crackling of the fire and the ticking of the clock.
From "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern
Flag isn’t like the Baxters’ other animals: He can’t pull a plow, track a bear, provide milk, or become a plateful of cracklings.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 23, 2026
Jaíne again turns to her native country of Brazil, making plantain gnocchi, pan-fried in duck fat with cracklings and orange sauce.
From Salon ● Apr. 20, 2022
There are fried sardines, fried pork cracklings, pickled eggs, gizzards and stews made from cow’s feet and oxtail.
From New York Times ● Dec. 3, 2021
It needed more than citrus jam and limp, chicken-skin cracklings to make it interesting.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 20, 2018
From time to time Ma skimmed out the brown cracklings.
From "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
