cake

Pronunciation

• IPA: /keɪk/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English kake, borrowed from Old Norse kaka (“cake”),^[2][3][4] related to Proto-West Germanic *kōkō, the source of Middle Dutch kōke, Dutch koek and German Kuchen “cake”,^[2][5] and to Old English cǣcel “small cake”, which it replaced.^[2][3] Barnhart traces it to Proto-Indo-European *gag-, *gōg- (“something round and lumpy”).^[3] It is not, as was once thought, related to Latin coquere “to cook”.^[2] It is related to cookie.^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

A flat, rather thin mass of baked dough, a kind of flat loaf: about 1200 in Barnhart,^[3] about 1230 in the OED,^[6] the early 13th century in Etymonline.^[2] The first cakes were small flat bread rolls baked hard on both sides.^[7]

Semantic evolution

From the early 15th century cakes were treated as fancy bread, made with flour, sugar, butter and other ingredients;^[2][6] the round, flat shape survives in fishcake and potato cake.^[7] In Scotland, Wales and the north of England a cake was long a thin, hard-baked oatcake.^[6][5] Any flat, rounded mass of a substance, such as soap, was called a cake from the mid-15th century.^[2] The verb, to form into a hard mass, is from 1607, in Shakespeare's Timon of Athens.^[3][6] Have one's cake and eat it goes back to John Heywood's proverbs (1562).^[2] Take the cake is American English from 1847, and piece of cake, something easy, from 1936.^[2] The “let them eat cake” story is found in Rousseau's Confessions, long before Marie Antoinette, with whom it has been associated since about 1870.^[2][7]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – a flat loaf.^[3]
• early 15th century – a sweet baked food.^[2]
• mid-15th century – any flat rounded mass.^[2]
• 1562 – eat your cake and have your cake.^[2]
• 1607 – verb, to form into a cake.^[3][6]
• 1847 – take the cake.^[2]
• 1936 – piece of cake.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. A sweet baked food made from flour, sugar, eggs and fat.
2. A flat, rounded mass of food, such as a pancake or fishcake.
3. A compact block of a substance: a cake of soap.

Verb

1. To cover with a thick layer of something that dries hard: boots caked with mud.
2. To form into a hard mass.

Word family

• cakey
• caky

Related words

• cookie
• pancake
• cupcake
• cakewalk

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d e Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ a b c Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press