biscuit
Pluralbiscuits
Verbbiscuits, biscuiting, biscuited
Pluralbiscuits
Formsbiscuits, biscuiting, biscuited
- 1A small, soft and flaky bread, generally made with baking soda, similar in texture to a scone but usually not sweet.
A flaky buttermilk biscuit pairs perfectly with fried chicken.
The diner served eggs, grits, and hot biscuits every morning.
Note
North American kitchens own this meaning, chiefly in the US and Canada. Outside them it turns up only rarely, in Scotland and Guernsey. Because the word means a savory bread here and the British cookie elsewhere, a recipe's origin tells the reader what to bake. An American biscuit belongs with the scone family, not the cookie tin.
- 2A small, flat baked good that is either hard and crisp or else soft but firm, equivalent to the American cookie.
Nothing beats a buttery shortbread biscuit with afternoon coffee.
Weighed myself at the gym and have hit 10st 8lb, a sure sign of things getting out of control—so I can’t even console myself with a chocolate biscuit.
1992, Edwina Currie, DiarySimilarcookie
Note
The British and Commonwealth meaning: in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, and sometimes Canada, a biscuit is what Americans call a cookie. The sense is rare in the US and the Philippines. Edwina Currie's 1992 diary reaches for a chocolate biscuit as consolation. In North America the same word means a soft, scone-like bread. The word comes from Old French bescuit, and Italian biscotto is its doublet.
- 3A thin, crisp, usually savory cracker.
She served pâté on a single oat biscuit.
The cheeseboard came with a selection of dry biscuits.
Similarcracker
Note
Savory and plain both count as biscuits in the UK, Ireland, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, which file under biscuit what Americans call a cracker. Fixed phrases carry it: cheese and biscuits, water biscuits, digestive biscuits. The Philippines is telling, because there biscuit means the cracker readily while the cookie sense is rare.
- 4A light brown color, resembling that of a baked biscuit.
The designer paired cream curtains with biscuit upholstery.
Painters mixed a touch of ochre to reach the perfect biscuit.
- 5A hard, dry bread or breadlike food, especially the kind once supplied to ships and armies, made with very little water and baked slowly to keep for long voyages.
The purser issued each man a daily ration of ship's biscuit.
Stale biscuits, riddled with weevils, were all that remained in the hold.
Similarhardtack
Note
Sailors had other names for the same ration: tack, or simply bread. Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851) turns it into a byword for toughness, describing a man whose flesh is "hard as twice-baked biscuit". The simile leans entirely on how unyielding the stuff was known to be.
- 6Unglazed earthenware that has been fired in a kiln, left porous and matte.
The studio stacked fresh biscuit beside the glaze buckets.
He tapped the biscuit to check that the clay had fully hardened.
Similarbisque
Note
This is the potter's word for the stage between raw clay and finished glaze. Erasmus Darwin already pairs it with enamel in 1791: "The biscuit hardens, the enamel shines." Writers on ceramics still speak of ware in the clay or biscuit state. The firing must be judged well, because an overfired biscuit is not porous enough to take glaze. Biscuitware and biscuitry name the same material, and the verb names the firing.
- 7A thin oval wafer of wood or similar material set into matching slots in two pieces being joined, adding gluing surface and strength in shear.
A well-placed biscuit keeps the mating edges flush during glue-up.
He cut slots along both boards before inserting the biscuits.
Note
Joinery borrowed the name for a flat, oval insert. It belongs to a family of joint reinforcements: dowels, splines, glue strips and finger joints do related work. The biscuit stands apart by its shape, a thin wafer seated half in each slot, and by doing two jobs at once: widening the glued area and resisting shear.
- 8To fire pottery in a kiln without a ceramic glaze, hardening the clay before any glaze coat is applied.
Most studios biscuit their work before applying any glaze.
She biscuited the mugs overnight in the small kiln.
Similarbisque
- 9The head of a person, in slang use.
The boxer caught a sharp jab to the biscuit.
He banged his biscuit on the cupboard door.
Similarhead, noggin, nut, bonce
Note
It is almost always someone else's head, and usually under threat. Rap lyrics aim gunshots or slaps at it, and Jeezy and YG stretch the food joke to gravy in a 2013 line about hitting someone hard. Nicki Minaj's "Beez in the Trap" (2012) uses it for the mind instead: what someone is thinking about. Its register is that of the handgun slang.
- 10A pistol, most often a revolver.
He pulled a biscuit and the room went silent.
She stashed the biscuit under the driver's seat.
Note
Hip-hop slang from the US, the same register in which the word also names the head. Army of the Pharaohs' "Bloody Tears" (2007) has a speaker firing his biscuit into the air. The word belongs to lyrics and street talk. In neutral writing about firearms, handgun or revolver is the safe choice.
- 11The hard rubber disk that ice hockey players shoot toward the goal; a puck.
He one-timed the biscuit before the defense could react.
The goalie smothered the biscuit against the boards.
Similarpuck
Note
Hockey slang for the puck, and shuffleboard players use it for their disk as well. It is a word for the rink and the broadcast booth, the playful alternative a commentator reaches for. In rulebooks and formal reports, puck remains the standard term.
- 12A plastic card printed with the authorization codes required to order a nuclear attack.
Reports claimed an aide once misplaced the biscuit for several months.
An officer briefed the new president on safeguarding the biscuit.
Note
This is American slang, and it gets its edge from pairing a homely kitchen word with one of the gravest objects a government can hold. It almost always takes the definite article (the biscuit) because it points to one particular card rather than a kind of thing. It suits reporting and casual talk; in careful prose, describing the card plainly is the safer choice.
- 13An inflatable inner tube ridden across the water in the sport of tubing.
He held tight to the biscuit as it skipped over the wake.
The teenagers dragged the biscuit down to the lake at dawn.
Similartube
Note
A New Zealand name for the tube, and the sport takes the name too: there, tubing is biscuiting. Elsewhere inner tube, or simply tube, is the word readers will recognize. A biscuit on a New Zealand lake is therefore something to ride, not something to eat.
- 14To float down a river on an inner tube as a recreational sport.
Every summer they biscuit along the slow stretch below the bridge.
We biscuited for hours until the current finally slowed.
Similartube
Note
New Zealand English turns the inner tube into a verb, so the rider is named for what they ride. The verb takes no object: you biscuit down or along a river, never biscuit the river itself. The spelling stays simple, biscuited and biscuiting, with no doubled t. The -ing form also names the sport, where speakers elsewhere would say tubing.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origin
The word comes from earlier "bisket," from Middle English "bisquyte," from Old French "bescuit" (modern French "biscuit"); it is a doublet of "biscotto."