fruitcake
UK/ˈfɹuːt.keɪk/
fruitcake noun: a cake containing dried fruits and, optionally, nuts, citrus peel and spice; usually served in celebration of weddings and Christmas.
Noun
fruitcake (countable and uncountable, plural fruitcakes)
- A cake containing dried fruits and, optionally, nuts, citrus peel and spice; usually served in celebration of weddings and Christmas.
- A crazy or eccentric person.
- Easy, feller, easy. She's a fruitcake.1952, Mickey Spillane, Kiss me Deadl, page 7
- One of the loafers kept calling down, "Hey you, Blondie, you like fruitcake kids like that?"1962, Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, New York: Signet, published 1963, page 205
- A homosexual male.
- Synonyms:
- fruit
Synonyms of fruitcake
Forms of fruitcake
| plural | fruitcakes |
|---|---|
| alternative form | fruit-cake |
| alternative form | fruit cake |
Origin of fruitcake
Compound of fruit + cake. First attested in c. 1687. Sense 2, predated by nutty as a fruitcake, was first attested in c. 1952.
Words formed from fruitcake
Phrases with fruitcake
Questions about fruitcake
- What does fruitcake mean?
- Fruitcake means a cake containing dried fruits and, optionally, nuts, citrus peel and spice; usually served in celebration of weddings and Christmas.
- What part of speech is fruitcake?
- Fruitcake is a noun.
- How do you pronounce fruitcake?
- Fruitcake is pronounced /ˈfɹuːt.keɪk/ (UK).
- What is the plural of fruitcake?
- The plural of fruitcake is fruitcakes.
Words near fruitcake in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: fruitcake (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-fruitcake.ogg.
Cite this entry: “fruitcake.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fruitcake. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.