get cracking

To start working on something. Often used as an imperative. Get cracking, or you'll be up all night working on your book report! Let's get cracking—I don't want to spend all day cleaning out the garage. Would you get cracking? The boss is expecting this report in an hour!

Rur. to get to work. If you want to finish that quilt by Labor Day, you best get cracking. Sit down to your homework and get cracking!

see under get a move on.

If you get cracking, you start doing something immediately and quickly. I realised that if we got cracking, we could make the last 700 miles to St Lucia within our deadline. I promised to get cracking on the deal.

Begin, get busy, hurry up. The first of these colloquialisms originated in Great Britain in the 1930s and appears to have crossed the Atlantic during World War II. It uses crack in the sense of “move fast,” a usage dating from the late nineteenth century, and is often put as an imperative, as in “Now get cracking before it starts to rain.” The synonymous get rolling, dating from the first half of the 1900s, alludes to setting wheels in motion. It, too, may be used as an imperative, but is more often heard in such locutions as “Jake said it’s time to get rolling on the contracts.”