Word.ws English Dictionary

lamington

/ˈlæmɪŋtən/

lamington noun: a small square Australian/New Zealand cake made with sponge cake covered on all sides (including top and bottom) with chocolate and desiccated coconut.

lamington: a small square Australian/New Zealand cake made with sponge cake covered on all sides (including...
Image: Peter McGinley, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

lamington (plural lamingtons)

  1. (Australia, New Zealand) A small square Australian/New Zealand cake made with sponge cake covered on all sides (including top and bottom) with chocolate and desiccated coconut.
    • Women were also known for their cooking skills although this was not so much in the provision of meals (which were ‘simple and wholesome’), but in the production of confectionery, ranging from scones, biscuits, sponges, cakes, etc., to such noted Australian and New Zealand delicacies as lamingtons...2000, Patrick Mullins, Chris Kynaston, “The Household Production of Subsistence Goods”, in Patrick Nicol Troy, editor, A History of European Housing in Australia: The Urban Peasant Thesis Reassessed...
    • Lamingtons are little sponge cakes coated in chocolate and grated coconut.2003, Dawn Marie Schrandt, Just Me Cookin Cakes, page 136

Proper noun capitalized: Lamington

Lamington

  1. A village in Highland council area, Scotland (OS grid ref NH7477).
  2. A village in South Lanarkshire council area, Scotland (OS grid ref NS9831).
  3. A suburb of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia.
  4. An unincorporated community in Somerset County, New Jersey, United States.

Examples of lamington in a sentence

  • Lamingtons are a traditional New Zealand tea-time treat: plain sponge dipped in a chocolate sauce and coated with coconut.2005, Pippa Cuthbert, Lindsay Cameron Wilson, Ice Cream!, page 118:
  • Goaded by Priol’s anagram, Lambert doubted the Shaky Isles’ equally rickety claims on the lamington.2021 April 14, David Astle, “Lamington wars: claiming an Australian invention really takes the cake”, in The Age:

Forms of lamington

plurallamingtons
alternative formleamington
alternative formlemmington

Origin of lamington

Uncertain. Although current dictionaries all associate it with Charles Cochrane-Baillie, 2nd Baron Lamington, the earliest publication of this derivation is by John Hepworth in the Nation Review of July 1977. An earlier (1966) reference gives the cake but does not associate it with the Baron, suggesting the theory was not current in the 1960s. It has also been claimed that the name comes from Lamington, South Lanarkshire.

Phrases with lamington

Questions about lamington

What does lamington mean?
Lamington means a small square Australian/New Zealand cake made with sponge cake covered on all sides (including top and bottom) with chocolate and desiccated coconut.
How do you use lamington in a sentence?
Lamingtons are a traditional New Zealand tea-time treat: plain sponge dipped in a chocolate sauce and coated with coconut.
What part of speech is lamington?
Lamington can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce lamington?
Lamington is pronounced /ˈlæmɪŋtən/.
What is the plural of lamington?
The plural of lamington is lamingtons.

Words near lamington in the dictionary

  1. laminectomy
  2. Lamines
  3. laminex
  4. laming
  5. lamings
  6. lamington
  7. lamington drive
  8. lamington drives
  9. lamingtons
  10. laminid
  11. laminids

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lamington (page history and authors); Lamington (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-au-lamington.ogg.

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