cake

Pluralcakes

Formscakes, caking, caked

1. 1
   baked dessertnouncountable or uncountable

   A rich, sweet dessert made from a batter of flour, sugar, and eggs, baked in an oven and often covered with icing.

   The bakery sells cake by the slice every afternoon.

   She frosted the cake with vanilla buttercream before the guests arrived.

   UsageBake a cake (one whole one), but eat some cake or a piece of cake (the food in general).

   Similargateau

2. 2
   nouncountable

   A flat, round patty made from minced or mashed fish, crab, potato, rice, or similar food, compressed and usually fried.

   Form the salmon mixture into eight cakes and fry them for three minutes on each side.

   The appetizer was a single cake of shredded cod and potato on a smear of garlic mayonnaise.

   UsageUsually with the food first: crab cakes, fish cakes, potato cakes, rice cakes.

   Similarpatty

   Note

   The shape, not the sweetness, is the point here: a flat, pressed round, the same idea behind a cake of soap and the small baked loaf. Source

   Checked 3 Nov 2026 · 2 facts

   • The savoury food is called a cake because of its shape rather than sweetness. en.wikipedia.org
   • The soap and small-loaf senses likewise refer to formed masses. en.wiktionary.org
3. 3
   easy tasknounslangcountable or uncountableabbreviationellipsis

   Ellipsis of piece of cake: a trivially easy task or responsibility.

   The first level of the game is cake compared to the rest.

   Parallel parking is cake after a few weeks of practice.

   UsageUsed bare after be, with no article: the test was cake. The full phrase is a piece of cake.

   Note

   Short for piece of cake, an American phrase recorded since the 1930s for a pleasant task and, by extension, an easy one. The Fugees used it in 1996, in a line denying that the world is easy.

4. 4
   block (soap)nouncountable or uncountable

   A block of dense, compacted material, such as soap, wax, or compressed animal feed.

   Each guest room came with a small cake of lavender soap.

   Workers stacked cakes of compressed tobacco in the warehouse.

   UsageUsually a cake of + the material: a cake of soap, a cake of wax.

   Similarblock

   Note

   Dryden's 1697 translation of Virgil has cakes of rustling ice rolling down the flood, so the material need not be manufactured. The verb to form into a mass is this sense put into action. Source

   Checked 1 Nov 2026 · 3 facts

   • Dryden's translation of Virgil was first published in 1697. openbook.lib.utah.edu
   • Dryden's translation describes cakes of ice rolling down a flood, illustrating application to naturally occurring material. gutenberg.org
   • The verb cake can mean forming material into a mass, corresponding to the compact-mass noun sense. en.wiktionary.org
5. 5
   verbtransitive

   To form a hard, dry crust, or to cover something with one, as with mud, blood, or soot.

   On windy days at the beach, salt spray can cake the windshield until the wipers barely help.

   By the time we finished cleaning out the flooded basement, our arms and boots were caked with dried mud.

   UsageMost often caked with or caked in, naming the crust: boots caked with mud.

   Similarcoat, encrust, crust, plaster, cover

   Note

   Crust and encrust are close synonyms, but caked suggests a thick layer of something once soft, such as mud or soot.

6. 6
   bread roundnouncountable or uncountable

   A small mass of baked dough, especially a thin, flat loaf made without leavening.

   Shepherds in the hills would carry a few dry barley cakes, baked flat on a griddle without any yeast, to last them through the day.

   Each soldier received a hard cake of oat bread with his rations.

   Similarloaf, bannock, flatbread

   Note

   Closer to bread than to dessert: a small, flat, often unleavened round, and the older and broader meaning behind the modern sweet one. It survives mostly in names where the grain or style comes first, such as an oatmeal cake or a johnnycake. Those compounds are where most readers will meet it today. Source

   Checked 30 Oct 2026 · 2 facts

   • The breadlike sense is older and broader than the modern sweet-cake sense. en.wiktionary.org
   • Historically, cake and bread were overlapping categories. en.wikipedia.org
7. 7
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A thin, wafer-shaped mass of fried batter cooked on a griddle; a griddlecake or pancake.

   The diner serves buckwheat cakes with maple syrup all morning.

   He poured the batter and waited for each cake to bubble before flipping it.

   Similarpancake, flapjack, hotcake

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