In New
Forest dialect, a cacker is not a chav, nor currently living on a housing estate. A cacker is someone who lives a rough lifestyle on the
forest. It derives from the verb 'to cack', meaning to deficate oneself, relating to the squalid living conditions these people choose to live in. Other characteristics of the atypical cacker involve eating road-kill, selling magic mushrooms,
badger-baiting, selling
junk and terrorising local pubs. The addition of 'er' on the end of cacker, suggests that it was once a name, which in turn derived from a
job title. In essence, a cacker is commonly treated as the non-Romany equivalent of a gypsy. Cacker can be used as a term of offence for non-cackers. A half-Romany/half-cacker is known as a diddicai.