cakes

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of cake.

   The judges sampled a dozen cakes before naming a winner.

   Sponge cakes rise more dramatically than dense pound loaves.

   Note

   The ordinary -s plural, and it belongs only to cake as a count noun: two cakes, a stack of griddlecakes, cakes of some dense material pressed into blocks. When cake is a mass noun (there is some cake left) it takes no plural at all, so some cakes means several whole ones, not a quantity of it. The same spelling also serves as the verb's present tense.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of cake.

   Salt cakes along the shoreline as the shallow pools evaporate.

   Flour cakes against the sides of the bowl if the batter sits too long.

   Note

   The present-tense form for he, she or it, serving both a transitive and an intransitive verb. With an object, the object is what gets crusted over: mud cakes the boots. Without one, the subject itself is hardening, as when blood cakes as it dries. Where the crust forms is usually named with a preposition: salt cakes along a shore, flour cakes against a bowl.

   Mud cakes his boots after every walk across the field.

   Blood cakes quickly on an open graze.

Showing meanings only. Show all 2