crackled


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crack·le

 (krăk′əl)
v. crack·led, crack·ling, crack·les
v.intr.
1. To make a succession of slight sharp snapping noises: a fire crackling in the wood stove.
2. To show liveliness, energy, or intensity: a book that crackles with humor.
3. To become covered with a network of fine cracks; craze.
v.tr.
1. To crush (paper, for example) with sharp snapping sounds.
2. To cause (china, for example) to become covered with a network of fine cracks.
n.
1. The act or sound of crackling.
2.
a. A network of fine cracks on the surface of glazed pottery, china, or glassware.
b. Crackleware.
[ Frequentative of crack.]
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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Then it was as if an invisible yet intensely heated finger were drawn through the heather between me and the Martians, and all along a curving line beyond the sand pits the dark ground smoked and crackled. Something fell with a crash far away to the left where the road from Woking station opens out on the common.
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He locked and unlocked his hands over the grate and spread his fingers close to the bluish flame, while the coals crackled and the clock ticked and a street vendor began to call under the window.
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Though it was an autumn evening and somewhat warm, a huge fire of heaped billets of wood crackled and sparkled in a broad, open grate, some of the smoke escaping up a rude chimney, but the greater part rolling out into the room, so that the air was thick with it, and a man coming from without could scarce catch his breath.
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I fancy it kept me warm, even in my slumbers, better than the high pile of blankets, which positively crackled with frost as I threw them off in the morning.
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