To praise extravagantly.
1835. [You might make the bear] pass for what you cracked him up to be.—D. P. Thompson, ‘Adventures of Timothy Peacock,’ p. 111 (Middlebury).
1837. (June 24.) One of the lodgers at the hotel [at Louisville] in true Kentucky style remarked that the Galt House was not after all just what it was cracked up to be.—John A. Clark, ‘Gleanings by the Way.’ (Italics in the original.)
1844. You cracked Tompkins up, didn’t you, and Tompkins pretends to be great shakes, don’t he?—J. C. Neal, ‘Peter Ploddy,’ &c., p. 137 (Phila.).
1844. “We must be cracked-up, Sir,” retorted Chollop, in a tone of menace. “You are not now in A despotic land. We are a model to the airth, and must be jist cracked-up, I tell you.”—Dickens, ‘Martin Chuzzlewit,’ chap. xxxiii.
1851. You will find the Secretary of State [Mr. Webster] drinking wine with his lordship the minister plenipotentiary from Great Britain, and cracking him up as a very great man.—Mr. Carter of Ohio, House of Repr., Feb. 25: Cong. Globe, p. 684.
1855. Heated, scratched, lacerated, and soliloquizing in vexation, methought at first it was not what ‘trouting’ is cracked up to be!—Knick. Mag., xlvi. 307 (Sept.).
1855. [Some people say] We have not found Mormonism what it is cracked up to be—it has been misrepresented to us.—Amasa Lyman at the Tabernacle, Dec. 2: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ iii. 142.
1857. Missouri is cracked up to be the greatest honey country that there is on the earth; but it will not be many years before they cannot raise a spoonful in that land, nor in Illinois, nor in any other land where they fight against God.—H. C. Kimball at the Bowery, Salt Lake City, July 26: id., v. 93.
1859. “Hog meat ain’t what it’s cracked up to be,” said Captain Gray, as he drew a deep sigh.—Mrs. Duniway, ‘Captain Gray’s Company,’ p. 129 (Portland, Oregon).
1860. I half believe bees know how much they ’ve been cracked up in Sunday-schools, and blow their trumps accordingly.—Knick. Mag., lvi. 461 (Nov.).
1909. [A novel] which she heard some city folks cracking up once.—N.Y. Evening Post, Feb. 4.
