cakewalk
/ˈkeɪk.wɔk/
cakewalk noun: a contest in which cake was offered for the best dancers.
Noun
cakewalk (plural cakewalks)
- A contest in which cake was offered for the best dancers.
- The style of music associated with such a contest.
- The dance, or strutting style of dance, associated with such a contest.
- Something that is easy or simple, or that does not present a great challenge.
- Just as common as she is, a cakewalk sort of a name.1899, Willa Cather, The Westbound Train
- Nah. The first step’s a cakewalk. We can beat the hell out of a developing infant, in any case.1995, Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2, New York, N.Y.: Farrar Straus Giroux, →ISBN, page 88
- Synonyms:
- bagatelle, waltz, breeze, cake and gingerbread, child's play, cinch, doddle, doss, duck soup, easy pickings
Verb
cakewalk (third-person singular simple present cakewalks, present participle cakewalking, simple past and past participle cakewalked)
- To perform the cakewalk dance.
cakewalk meaning in Kannada
cakewalk in Kannada
- ಸರಾಗ, ಹಗುರ
Synonyms of cakewalk
14 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of cakewalk
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | cakewalks |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | cakewalks |
| present participle | cakewalking |
| past participle | cakewalked |
| past | cakewalked |
Origin of cakewalk
From cake + walk. Originally an African-American form of dance and music that developed after the Civil War, later popularised by minstrel shows. It was danced at social events, with the best dancers often receiving cake as a prize. It derives from dance competitions by plantation slaves in which the style of dance lampooned the ballroom dances of the slaveowners. Slaveowners seem to have found the competitions entertaining and the habit of offering cake may originate from this period. The name is sometimes also applied to the dance's precursor on the plantations. Doing the cakewalk well required virtuosity, and a major aesthetic aspect of that virtuosity was the apparent ease with which the dance was performed. This gave rise to the idiom as easy as a cakewalk, which in turn led to the sense of cakewalk as something that is easy. See the linked Wikipedia article for more.
Questions about cakewalk
- What does cakewalk mean?
- Cakewalk means a contest in which cake was offered for the best dancers.
- What is cakewalk in Kannada?
- Cakewalk in Kannada is ಸರಾಗ, ಹಗುರ. See Cakewalk meaning in Kannada.
- What part of speech is cakewalk?
- Cakewalk can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce cakewalk?
- Cakewalk is pronounced /ˈkeɪk.wɔk/ (US).
- What is the plural of cakewalk?
- The plural of cakewalk is cakewalks.
Words near cakewalk in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cakewalk (page history and authors); cakewalk (Kannada Wiktionary) (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-cakewalk.ogg, en-au-cakewalk.ogg.
Cite this entry: “cakewalk.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cakewalk. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.