hardtack
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of hardtack
Explanation
Hardtack is an old-fashioned type of bread or cracker that sailors used to bring with them during long voyages. The taste and texture of hardtack wasn't popular, but it lasted a long time without spoiling. If you take a close look at the word hardtack, you'll have a clear sense of how sailors felt about having to eat it day after day. The hard part is accurate — it was so dry and tough that it was difficult to bite. Tack once meant "food," but in dialect it was specifically "bad food." Hardtack had many alternate names, including "soda crackers" and "sea biscuits," but also "dog biscuits" and "molar breakers."
Vocabulary lists containing hardtack
The American Civil War
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A Toast to Bread
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The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle
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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.
Cramped inside vessels overladen with precious cargo, crewmembers subsisted on a miserable diet of hardtack, an unleavened bread, and salted meat and fish that routinely spoiled and left many gravely ill.
From Barron's ● Apr. 28, 2026
Wartime museums display the bland hardtack that sustained Civil War fighters, and the canned meats, breads and fruit of World War II, known as C rations.
From New York Times ● Jun. 8, 2021
In the first they sample decades old corn chips, century-old Civil War hardtack and then freshen up with 100-year-old tooth powder.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 24, 2020
Some sailors use pilot bread — a thick, crackerlike item similar to Colonial-era hardtack, which doesn’t go stale — to settle their stomachs.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 1, 2018
They sat on a flat table-shaped rock halfway up and shared a hardtack lunch followed by a canteen of water.
From "Redwall" by Brian Jacques
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.
