bake

UK/beɪk/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/bæɪk/

bake verb: to cook (something) in an oven (for someone).

Verb

bake (third-person singular simple present bakes, present participle baking, simple past baked or (dialectal) book, past participle baked or (dialectal) book or (dialectal) baken)

(ditransitive, intransitive, transitive) To cook (something) in an oven (for someone).
- I baked a delicious cherry pie.
- She's been baking all day to prepare for the dinner.
(intransitive) To be cooked in an oven.
- The cake baked at 350°F.
(intransitive) To regularly prepare baked goods.
- In some cultures, it is expected that a proper housewife should bake.
(figuratively, intransitive, slang) To smoke marijuana.
- (Let's bake tonight.)
(figuratively) To incorporate into something greater.
- Disagreements between pilots' unions are baked into the merger cake.2014, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security, Airline Industry Consolidation: Hearing, page 36
- Many of the causes of governmental dysfunction are simply baked into the cake of American politics and will never change.2016, David B. Woolner, John M. Thompson, Progressivism in America: Past, Present and Future, page 100
(intransitive) To be warmed for drying and hardening.
- The clay baked in the sun.
Synonyms:

fire
(transitive) To dry by heat.
- They baked the electrical parts lightly to remove moisture.
(figuratively, intransitive) To be hot.
- It is baking in the greenhouse.
- I'm baking after that workout in the gym.
(figuratively, transitive) To cause to be hot.
- My dad told me about his days in the Navy: He'd agreed to be a guinea pig in exchange for a shorter enlistment. […] They baked him in the sun.2008 October, Davy Rothbart, “How I caught up with dad”, in Men's Health, volume 23, number 8, →ISSN, page 112
(broadly, obsolete, transitive) To harden by cold.
- The earth […] is baked with frost.1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published...
- They bake their sides vppon the cold, hard stone.1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto VII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 9
(transitive) To fix (lighting, reflections, etc.) as part of the texture of an object to improve rendering performance.

Noun

bake (plural bakes)

The act of cooking food by baking.
- Taking one of her cakes or a tray of biscuits from the oven always gives her satisfaction and a moment of pride; that is, of course, unless there happens to be some little element that doesn't please her with the bake.2015, Patricia Grace, Chappy, →ISBN
(Australia, New Zealand, UK, especially) Any of various baked dishes resembling casserole.
- A fish bake made with cod chunks, sliced parboiled potatoes, […]2009, Dictionary of Food: International Food and Cooking Terms from A to Z, →ISBN
- If you happen to have small, heat-proof glass or ceramic pots in your kitchen (known as ramekins) then you can make this very easy pasta bake in fun-size, individual portions.2009, Rosalind Peters, Kate Pankhurst, Clive Boursnell, Midnight Feast Magic: Sleepover Fun and Food
Any food item that is baked, such as a pastry.
- bake pan
- Baking parchment should not be confused with greaseproof paper — the former has a non-stick coating and will ensure that your bakes lift out of the tin or off the baking sheets easily, the latter will have the opposite effect!2016, Annie Rigg, Great British Bake Off: Children's Party Cakes & Bakes
(US) A social event at which food (such as seafood) is baked, or at which baked food is served.
- an oyster bake on the shore
- The central episode is the temporary burial of the novitiate; a shallow pit is excavated, and in this a fire is made, as for a fish bake; […]1904, Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology
(Barbados, UK, US, sometimes) A small, flat (or ball-shaped) cake of dough eaten mainly in Barbados, similar in appearance and ingredients to a pancake but fried (or sometimes roasted).
- For quotations using this term, see Citations:bake.

bake meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

bake in Hindi

to cook in an oven: सेंकना sẽknā
to dry by heat: सुखाना sukhānā

bake in Tamil

வெதுப்புதல், உயர்வெப்பத்தில் வாட்டுதல், மிகை வெப்பத்தில் சுடுதல், வானவில் வேகவைத்துச் சுடு, வெயிலில் காயவைத்துக் கெட்டியாக்கு, வாட்டி முறுமுறுப்பாக்கு

bake in Bengali

to cook in an oven: সেকা śeka

More languagesFewer languages

bake in Malayalam: ചുട്ടെടുക്കുക cuṭṭeṭukkuka, ചുടുക cuṭuka
bake in Kannada: ಸುಡು, ಬೇಯಿಸು
bake in Gujarati: શેકવું śekvũ
bake in Sanskrit: पचति pacati
bake in Assamese: সেকা xeka
bake in Tagalog: salang
bake in Arabic: خَبَزَ ḵabaza, خَبز
bake in Malay: bakar, jemur
bake in Persian: پختن poxtan
bake in Thai: อบ òp
bake in Vietnamese: nướng
bake in Myanmar: ဖုတ် hput

Examples of bake in a sentence

He baked her a cake.
Traditionally made with flour, salt, yeast and a large amount of fat or lard, it is claimed that the beloved bake has fallen out of favour with younger people.2024 May 24, The Press and Journal, Inverness, page 28, column 2:
[…] also featured a fish bake, a dance, and a beach party[.]2006, Jeffery P. Sandman, Peter R. Sandman, Soaring and Gliding: The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Area:

All 40 example sentences with bake

Synonyms of bake

fire

Forms of bake

Verb
third-person singular present	bakes
present participle	baking
past	baked
past participle	baked
past (dialectal)	book
past participle (dialectal)	book
past participle (dialectal)	baken
Noun
plural	bakes

Past tense of bake: baked

Plural of bake: bakes

Origin of bake

From Middle English baken, from Old English bacan (“to bake”), from Proto-West Germanic *bakan, from Proto-Germanic *bakaną (“to bake”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeh₃g- (“to roast, bake”). Cognate with West Frisian bakke (“to bake”), Dutch bakken (“to bake”), Low German backen (“to bake”), German backen (“to bake”), Norwegian Bokmål bake (“to bake”), Danish bage (“to bake”), Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish baka (“to bake”), Ancient Greek φώγω (phṓgō, “roast”, verb).

Words formed from bake

Phrases with bake

Words that rhyme with bake

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bake

What does bake mean?: Bake means to cook (something) in an oven (for someone).
What is bake in Hindi?: Bake in Hindi is सेंकना (sẽknā), सुखाना (sukhānā). See Bake meaning in Hindi.
How do you use bake in a sentence?: He baked her a cake.
What part of speech is bake?: Bake can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce bake?: Bake is pronounced /beɪk/ (UK).
What is the past tense of bake?: The past tense of bake is baked.

Words near bake in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: bake (page history and authors); bake (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ചുടുക (Malayalam) (page history and authors); bake (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); શેકવું (Gujarati) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-bake.ogg.

Cite this entry: “bake.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bake. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.