crack a book
English
[edit]Verb
[edit]crack a book (third-person singular simple present cracks a book, present participle cracking a book, simple past and past participle cracked a book)
- (informal) To open up one's books, especially in order to study.
- You had better crack the books if you want to have any chance of graduating this year.
- Of course he didn't even know that the Partition happened in the 1940s, let alone any details of cross-border disputes since then. It's not like that guy ever cracks a book.
Usage notes
[edit]The article a is not used exclusively, often it is replaced with the or a pronoun; e.g. "crack the books" or "crack some books". This idiom is also sometimes used without an intermediate determiner, e.g. "Cracking books is not optional in this class."