cake

cake¹ W3S2 [keık] n

[Date: 1100-1200; : Old Norse; Origin: kaka]

1.) [U and C]

a soft sweet food made by baking a mixture of flour, butter, sugar, and eggs

▪ cake and ice cream

▪ chocolate cake

birthday/wedding/Christmas cake

▪ Do you want some birthday cake?

slice/piece of cake

▪ Would you like a slice of cake?

make/bake a cake

▪ Sally decided to bake him a cake.

2.) fish/rice/potato etc cake

fish, rice etc that has been formed into a flat round shape and then cooked

3.)

a small block of something

cake of

▪ a cake of soap

4.) be a piece of cake

spoken to be very easy

▪ 'How do you do that?' 'It's a piece of cake! Watch!'

5.) take the cake also take the biscuit BrE informal to be worse than anything else you can imagine

▪ I've heard some pretty dumb ideas, but that takes the cake!

6.) have your cake and eat it

BrE have your cake and eat it too AmE spoken to have all the advantages of something without its disadvantages

7.) a slice of the cake

BrE a share of the profit, help etc that is available

▪ Both companies expect to get a big slice of the cake.

→sell like hot cakes at ↑hot cake

cake ²

cake² v

1.) be caked with/in sth

to be covered with a layer of something soft or wet that becomes thick and hard when it dries

▪ Our boots were caked with mud.

2.) [I]

if a substance cakes, it forms a thick hard layer when it dries