different between cake vs trifle

English

Etymology 1

From Middle English cake, from Old Norse kaka (“cake”) (compare Norwegian kake, Icelandic/Swedish kaka, Danish kage), from Proto-Germanic *kak? (“cake”), from Proto-Indo-European *gog (“ball-shaped object”) (compare Northern Kurdish gog (“ball”); Romanian gogoa?? (“doughnut”) and gog? (“walnut, nut”); Lithuanian gúoge (“head of cabbage”)). Related to cookie, kuchen, and quiche.

Pronunciation

• enPR: k?k, IPA^(key): /ke?k/, [k?e?k]
• Rhymes: -e?k

Noun

cake (countable and uncountable, plural cakes)

1. A rich, sweet dessert food, typically made of flour, sugar, and eggs and baked in an oven, and often covered in icing.

   Synonym: gateau

2. A small mass of baked dough, especially a thin loaf from unleavened dough.

3. A thin wafer-shaped mass of fried batter; a griddlecake or pancake.

   buckwheat cakes

4. A block of any of various dense materials.

   Synonym: block

   • Cakes of rustling ice come rolling down the flood.

5. (slang) A trivially easy task or responsibility; from a piece of cake.

   Synonyms: piece of cake; see also Thesaurus:easy thing

6. (slang) Money.
7. Used to describe the doctrine of having one's cake and eating it too.
   • 2018, The Guardian, "UK's aspirations for post-Brexit trade deal an illusion, says Donald Tusk", Daniel Boffey, Peter Walker, Jennifer Rankin, and Heather Stewart, 23 February 2018

     "It looks like the cake [and eat it] philosophy is still alive." Quote attributed to Donald Tusk.

8. (slang) A buttock, especially one that is exceptionally plump.

   Mmm, I'd like to cut me some of that cake!

Usage notes

• In North America, a biscuit is a small, soft baked bread similar to a scone but not sweet. In the United Kingdom, a biscuit is a small, crisp or firm, sweet baked good — the sort of thing which in North America is called a cookie. (Less frequently, British speakers refer to crackers as biscuits.) In North America, even small, layered baked sweets like Oreos are referred to as sandwich cookies, while in the UK, typically only those biscuits which have chocolate chips, nuts, fruit, or other things baked into them are also called cookies.
• Throughout the English-speaking world, thin, crispy, salty or savoury baked breads like these are called crackers, while thin, crispy, sweet baked goods like these and these are wafers.
• Both the US and the UK distinguish crackers, wafers and cookies/biscuits from cakes: the former are generally hard or crisp and become soft when stale, while the latter is generally soft or moist and becomes hard when stale.

Derived terms

Descendants

• ? Assamese: ??’? (këk)
• ? Dutch: kaak, cake (also keek, older also kaaks, keeks)
• ? French: cake
• ? Gulf Arabic: ???? (k?k)
• ? Hijazi Arabic: ????? (k?ka)
• ? Japanese: ??? (k?ki)
• ? Korean: ??? (keikeu)
• ? Nauruan: keik
• ? Portuguese: queque
• ? Russian: ??? (kek)
• ? Spanish: queque

From the plural cakes:

• ? Danish: kiks
  • ? Faroese: keks
• ? German: Keks
  • ? Polish: keks
  • ? Russian: ???? (keks)
  • ? Serbo-Croatian: k?ks, ?????
• ? Icelandic: kex
• ? Norwegian:

  Bokmål: kjeks

  Nynorsk: kjeks

• ? Swedish: kex
  • ? Finnish: keksi

Translations

See also

• Category:Cakes and pastries

Verb

cake (third-person singular simple present cakes, present participle caking, simple past and past participle caked)

1. (transitive) Coat (something) with a crust of solid material.

   Synonyms: crust, encrust

2. (transitive) To form into a cake, or mass.
3. (intransitive) Of blood or other liquid, to dry out and become hard.

Translations

Etymology 2

Verb

cake (third-person singular simple present cakes, present participle caking, simple past and past participle caked)

1. (Britain, dialect, obsolete, intransitive) To cackle like a goose.

Translations

Further reading

• cake on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• cake on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons

Anagrams

• akçe

Ambonese Malay

Etymology

Unknown.

Verb

cake

1. to eat (only used during heated conversations)

   Synonym: makang

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from English cake.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ke?k/
• Hyphenation: cake
• Rhymes: -e?k

Noun

cake m (plural cakes, diminutive cakeje n)

1. pound cake

Derived terms

• boerencake
• cakeblik
• cakevorm

Related terms

• cupcake

Fijian

Adverb

cake

1. up

French

Etymology

Borrowed from English cake.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k?k/

Noun

cake m (plural cakes)

1. fruitcake (containing rum).
2. quick bread (a smallish loaf-shaped baked good which may be sweet like an English cake or salty and with bits of meat. See insert).

Further reading

• “cake” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Middle English

Alternative forms

• kake, caake, cayk

Etymology

From Old Norse kaka, from Proto-Germanic *kak?.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?ka?k(?)/

Noun

cake (plural cakes)

1. cake (any sort of flat doughy food)
2. (medicine) A cake prepared to cure disease or illness.
3. (Christianity, rare) The communion wafer or host.
4. (rare) A lump, boil, or ball; a cake-shaped object.

Derived terms

• pancake

Descendants

• English: cake (see there for further descendants)
• Scots: cake
• Yola: caake, kaake

References

• “c?ke, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-07-05.

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from English cake, from Middle English cake, from Old Norse kaka.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?keik/, [?kei?k]

Noun

cake m (plural cakes)

1. cake; fruitcake

Tocharian B

Etymology

From Proto-Indo-European *ték(?)os.

Noun

cake ?

1. river

References

• Adams, Douglas Q. (2013) A Dictionary of Tocharian B: Revised and Greatly Enlarged (Leiden Studies in Indo-European; 10), Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi, ?ISBN

English

Etymology

From Middle English trifle, trifel, triful, trefle, truyfle, trufful, from Old French trufle (“mockery”), a byform of trufe, truffe (“deception”), of uncertain origin.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?t?a?f?l/
• Rhymes: -a?f?l
• Hyphenation: tri?fle

Noun

trifle (countable and uncountable, plural trifles)

1. An English dessert made from a mixture of thick custard, fruit, sponge cake, jelly and whipped cream.

   Coordinate terms: tiramisu, bread pudding

2. Anything that is of little importance or worth.

   Synonyms: bagatelle, minor detail, whiffle; see also Thesaurus:trifle

   • c. 1604, William Shakespeare, Othello, Act III, Scene 3,^[1]

     Trifles light as air / Are to the jealous confirmation strong / As proofs of holy writ.

   • 1631, Michael Drayton, Nimphidia the Court of Fayrie in The Battaile of Agincourt, London: William Lee, p. 168,^[2]

     Olde Chaucer doth of Topas tell,

     Mad Rablais of Pantagruell,

     A latter third of Dowsabell,

     With such poore trifles playing:

   • 1722, Daniel Defoe, The fortunes and misfortunes of the famous Moll Flanders, London, p. 34,^[3]

     […] when they had the Character and Honour of a Woman at their Mercy, often times made it their Jest, and at least look’d upon it as a Trifle, and counted the Ruin of those, they had had their Will of, as a thing of no value.

   • 1871, Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter 4,^[4]

     ‘And all about a rattle!’ said Alice, still hoping to make them a little ashamed of fighting for such a trifle.

   1. An insignificant amount of money.
      • c. 1597, William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1, Act III, Scene 3,^[5]

        A trifle, some eight-penny matter.

      • 1818, Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, Chapter 9,^[6]

        He told her of horses which he had bought for a trifle and sold for incredible sums […]

      • 1900, Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood, Chapter 30, p. 311,^[7]

        What’s eighty dollars? A trifle. An insignificant sum.

      • 1975, Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, New York: Avon, 1976, p. 462,^[8]

        “It was bad of me then not to send the fifteen hundred dollars. I assumed it would be a trifle.”

        “Well, until a few months ago it was a trifle.”

3. A very small amount (of something).

   Synonyms: smidgen; see also Thesaurus:modicum

   • 1742, Daniel Defoe, A tour thro’ the whole island of Great Britain, London: J. Osborn et al., Volume 2, Letter II. Containing A Description of the City of London, p. 90, footnote,^[9]

     This Line leaves out […] Poplar and Black-wall, which are indeed contiguous, a Trifle of Ground excepted, and very populous.

   • 1868, Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, Part 1, Chapter 2,^[10]

     There was a good deal of rustling and whispering behind the curtain, a trifle of lamp smoke, and an occasional giggle from Amy […]

   • 1932, Graham Greene, Stamboul Strain, London: Heinemann, Part 4, p. 180,^[11]

     “Take just a trifle of French mustard […] ”

4. A particular kind of pewter.
5. (uncountable) Utensils made from this particular kind of pewter.

Derived terms

• a trifle

Translations

Verb

trifle (third-person singular simple present trifles, present participle trifling, simple past and past participle trifled)

1. (intransitive) To deal with something as if it were of little importance or worth.

   You must not trifle with her affections.

   • c. 1604, William Shakespeare, Othello, Act I, Scene 1,^[12]

     […] Do not believe

     That, from the sense of all civility,

     I thus would play and trifle with your reverence:

   • 1813, Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 56,^[13]

     “Miss Bennet,” replied her ladyship, in an angry tone, “you ought to know, that I am not to be trifled with […] ”

   • 1948, Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country, Penguin, 1958, Book 2, Chapter 11, p. 171,^[14]

     But a Judge may not trifle with the Law because the society is defective.

2. (intransitive) To act, speak, or otherwise behave with jest.
   • 1847, Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, Chapter 27,^[15]

     […] playing and trifling are completely banished out of my mind […]

   • 1953, Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March, New York: Viking, 1960, Chapter 19, p. 405,^[16]

     But he was terribly roused too and bound to go on; he wasn’t just trifling but intended something.

3. (intransitive) To inconsequentially toy with something.
   • 1850, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Chapter 28,^[17]

     Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair, trifled with his eye-glass and cast his eyes up at the ceiling […]

   • 1965, Muriel Spark, The Mandelbaum Gate, New York: Fawcett, 1967, Part 1, Chapter 6, p. 151,^[18]

     She sat in a café, trifling with her coffee spoon.

4. (transitive) To squander or waste.
   • c. 1596, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene 1,^[19]

     We trifle time: I pray thee, pursue sentence.

   • 1677, Hannah Woolley, The Compleat Servant-Maid, London: T. Passinger, p. 62,^[20]

     For an honest and sober man will rather make that woman his wife, whom he seeth employed continually about her business, than one who makes it her business to trifle away her own and others time.

   • 1818, Jane Austen, Persuasion, Chapter 6,^[21]

     As it was, he did nothing with much zeal, but sport; and his time was otherwise trifled away, without benefit from books or anything else.

   • 1925, Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985, p. 189,^[22]

     You who have known neither sorrow nor pleasure; who have trifled your life away!

5. (transitive, obsolete) To make a trifle of, to make trivial.
   • c. 1605, William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act II, Scene 4,^[23]

     […] but this sore night

     Hath trifled former knowings.

Synonyms

• (toy with): fiddle
• (squander): fritter, wanton

Translations

See also

• trifle on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• filter, filtre, firtle, lifter, relift

Portuguese

Noun

trifle m (plural trifles)

1. trifle (English dessert)