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Comment by Avicebron | Hacker News Reader

It's a fairly common english phrase that originated out of the gaming culture of the US in the mid 2000-2010s.

"He's so good (plays aggressively) he must be on crack" sort of became "he's cracked", etc. Now that the people who were killing CoD lobbies are writing code full time or running companies, its seeped out.

Actually I think "it's cooked" came from this as well.

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I have heard this term and used it myself but wasn't aware of the etymology.

Funny enough, I've only ever heard 'crack team' used in a professional context.

If 'cooked' diffuses to corporate at the same rate then I'm very much looking forward to 'cooking the ops' during standup in 2035 :P

"Crack team" long predates video games and even crack cocaine. I think it is related to the phrase "get cracking", i.e., "get working", but I wasn't able to find a clear etymological line. One possibility is it refers to gunfire, but I wonder if it refers to harvesting, cracking corn, etc.

Oxford claims "Crack Shot" to refer to an expert marksman goes all the way back to 1841.

https://www.oed.com/dictionary/crack-shot_n?tl=true

What if it's actually Craic team though ?

IMHE everybody wants to be on the craic team - they play hard, work hard and go hard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craic

Notably, if someone is "cooked", it's bad. If someone is "cooking", it's often (but not necessarily) positive, most commonly in the form "let him/her cook" or "he's/she's cooking".

I have no idea where "cooked" came from, but "cooking" seems to be from the very old phrase "cooking up" which broadly meant something like "creatively making" and didn't specifically refer to food.

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