cake

English
A slice of cake (1), specifically a slice of a torte.
A layer cake from which a slice has been removed.

Etymology 1

From Middle English cake, from Old Norse kaka (“cake”) (compare Norwegian kake, Icelandic/Swedish kaka, Danish kage), from Proto-Germanic *kakǭ (“cake”), from Proto-Indo-European *gog (“ball-shaped object”) (compare Romanian gogoașă (“doughnut”) and gogă (“walnut, nut”); Lithuanian gúoge (“head of cabbage”), Albanian kokë (“head”). Related to cookie, kuchen, and quiche.

Pronunciation
  • enPR: kāk, IPA(key): /keɪk/
  • Audio (US)(file)
  • Audio (UK)(file)
  • Rhymes: -eɪk

Noun

cake (countable and uncountable, plural cakes)

  1. A rich, sweet dessert food, typically made of flour, sugar, and eggs and baked in an oven, and often covered in icing.
    Synonym: gâteau
  2. A small mass of baked dough, especially a thin loaf from unleavened dough.
    an oatmeal cake
    a johnnycake
  3. A thin wafer-shaped mass of fried batter; a griddlecake or pancake.
    buckwheat cakes
  4. A block of any of various dense materials.
    Synonym: block
    a cake of soap
    a cake of sand
    • Dryden
      Cakes of rusting ice come rolling down the flood.
  5. (slang) A trivially easy task or responsibility; from a piece of cake.
    Synonyms: piece of cake; see also Thesaurus:easy thing
  6. (slang) Money.
  7. Used to describe the doctrine of having one's cake and eating it too.
    • 2018, The Guardian, "UK's aspirations for post-Brexit trade deal an illusion, says Donald Tusk", Daniel Boffey, Peter Walker, Jennifer Rankin, and Heather Stewart, 23 February 2018
      "It looks like the cake [and eat it] philosophy is still alive." Quote attributed to Donald Tusk.
  8. (slang) An exceptionally plump and callipygous female buttock.
Usage notes
  • In North America, a biscuit is a small, soft baked bread similar to a scone but not sweet. In the United Kingdom, a biscuit is a small, crisp or firm, sweet baked good — the sort of thing which in North America is called a cookie. (Less frequently, British speakers refer to crackers as biscuits.) In North America, even small, layered baked sweets like Oreos are referred to as cookies, while in the UK, only those biscuits which have chocolate chips, nuts, fruit, or other things baked into them are also called cookies.
  • Throughout the English-speaking world, thin, crispy, salty or savoury baked breads like these are called crackers, while thin, crispy, sweet baked goods like these and these are wafers.
  • Both the US and the UK distinguish crackers, wafers and cookies/biscuits from cakes: the former are generally hard or crisp and become soft when stale, while the latter is generally soft or moist and becomes hard when stale.
Derived terms
Terms derived from cake
Descendants

From the plural cakes:

Translations
a trivially easy task or responsibility — see piece of cake
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked
See also
  • Category:Cakes and pastries

See also

Verb

cake (third-person singular simple present cakes, present participle caking, simple past and past participle caked)

  1. (transitive) Coat (something) with a crust of solid material.
    Synonyms: crust, encrust
    His shoes are caked with mud.
  2. To form into a cake, or mass.
Translations

Verb

cake (third-person singular simple present cakes, present participle caking, simple past and past participle caked)

  1. (Britain, dialectal, obsolete, intransitive) To cackle like a goose.

Translations
to cackle like a goose — see cackle

Further reading

Anagrams

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for cake in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.)

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from English cake.

Pronunciation
  • Audio(file)
  • Hyphenation: cake

Noun

cake m (plural cakes, diminutive cakeje n)

  1. pound cake

Fijian

Adverb

cake

  1. up
Un cake au jambon.

French

Etymology

Borrowed from English cake.

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /kɛk/
  • Audio(file)

Noun

cake m (plural cakes)

  1. fruitcake (containing rum).
  2. quick bread (a smallish loaf-shaped baked good which may be sweet like an English cake or salty and with bits of meat. See insert).

Further reading

Middle English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Old Norse kaka, from Proto-Germanic *kakǭ.

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ˈkaːk(ə)/

Noun

cake (plural cakes)

  1. cake (any sort of flat doughy food)
  2. (medicine) A cake prepared to cure disease or illness.
  3. (Christianity, rare) The communion wafer or host.
  4. (rare) A lump, boil, or ball; a cake-shaped object.

Derived terms

Descendants

References

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from English cake, from Middle English cake, from Old Norse kaka.

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /ˈkeiɡ/, [ˈkei̯ɣ]

Noun

cake m (plural cakes)

  1. cake; fruitcake

Tocharian B

Etymology

From Proto-Indo-European *ték(ʷ)os.

Noun

cake

  1. river

References
  • Adams, Douglas Q. (2013) A Dictionary of Tocharian B: Revised and Greatly Enlarged (Leiden Studies in Indo-European; 10), Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, →ISBN
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