# cake

Pronunciation: say "KAYK" /keɪk/

## Noun

1. A rich, sweet dessert made from a batter of flour, sugar, and eggs, baked in an oven and often covered with icing.
   - Simple: A sweet baked food made with flour, sugar, and eggs, often with icing on top.
   - _The bakery sells cake by the slice every afternoon._
   - _She frosted the cake with vanilla buttercream before the guests arrived._
2. A flat, round patty made from minced or mashed fish, crab, potato, rice, or similar food, compressed and usually fried.
   - Simple: A flat, round piece of chopped or mashed food, like fish or potato, pressed together and often 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._
3. Ellipsis of piece of cake: a trivially easy task or responsibility. *(slang)* — Ellipsis of piece of cake: a trivially easy task or responsibility.
   - Simple: Short for piece of cake. Use it to say a task is very easy.
   - _The first level of the game is cake compared to the rest._
   - _Parallel parking is cake after a few weeks of practice._
4. A block of dense, compacted material, such as soap, wax, or compressed animal feed.
   - Simple: A hard block of some material, such as soap.
   - _Each guest room came with a small cake of lavender soap._
   - _Workers stacked cakes of compressed tobacco in the warehouse._
6. A small mass of baked dough, especially a thin, flat loaf made without leavening.
   - Simple: A small, flat piece of baked bread dough.
   - _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._
7. A thin, wafer-shaped mass of fried batter cooked on a griddle; a griddlecake or pancake.
   - Simple: A thin, flat round of fried batter, like a 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._
9. A person's buttocks, especially a pair that is exceptionally plump or full. *(slang)*
   - Simple: A slang word for someone's bottom, especially a round, full one.
   - _The dancer's routine drew cheers every time she shook her cake._
   - _Leggings like those are designed to flatter your cake._
10. A slang term for money. *(slang)*
   - Simple: A slang word for money.
   - _He flashed a roll of bills like he was the only one with cake._
   - _Touring musicians can make real cake on the festival circuit._

## Verb

5. To form a hard, dry crust, or to cover something with one, as with mud, blood, or soot.
   - Simple: To dry into a hard layer, or to cover something with a hard dry layer.
   - _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._
8. To form a loose substance into a solid mass, or (of a powder) to clump into hard lumps.
   - Simple: To press something into a hard lump, or for a powder to stick together in lumps.
   - _If you store powdered milk somewhere damp, it will cake into hard lumps that are difficult to stir back into water._
   - _In this humid kitchen, the salt cakes in the shaker within a week._

## Other meanings

- (noun) A multishot firework consisting of several tubes, each loaded with its own effect, all linked to fire in sequence from a single fuse.

## Origin

Cake comes from Middle English "cake," borrowed from Old Norse "kaka" (compare Norwegian "kake," Swedish "kaka" and Danish "kage"), from Proto-Germanic *kakǭ, whose ultimate origin is disputed. It may be distantly related to "cookie," "kuchen," and "quiche."

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/cake (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).