mooncake
Syllables: moon·cake/ˈmuːnkeɪk/US/ˈmunkeɪk/
mooncake noun: a rich, dense Chinese pastry traditionally filled with lotus seed paste and nowadays with a variety of other fillings, usually eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival (on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar; early September to early October).
Noun
mooncake (plural mooncakes)
- A rich, dense Chinese pastry traditionally filled with lotus seed paste and nowadays with a variety of other fillings, usually eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival (on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar; early September to early October).
- The fifteenth Day of the eighth Moon, is ſolemniz'd by the Chineſes with great feaſting and rejoycing. […] To this purpoſe, the preceding Days they ſend to one another Preſents of little Loaves and Sugar-Cakes, which they call Yue Pim, or Moon-Cakes. They are round, but the biggeſt, which are about...1688, Gabriel Magaillans [i.e., Gabriel de Magalhães], “Of Several Other Palaces, and Some Temples Erected within the Same Enclosures”, in [anonymous], transl., A New History of China, Containing a...
- Mei-kwei 玫丨 [i.e., 玫瑰] name of a pearl; also of a round cake, called the moon-cake, eaten at the harvest moon; […]1819, R[obert] Morrison, “瑰 [guī]”, in A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, […], part II, volume I, Macao: […] East India Company’s Press, by P[eter] P[erring] Thoms, →OCLC, entry number 6772, page...
mooncake meaning in Arabic, Malay, Indonesian and Thai
mooncake in Arabic
- Chinese pastry usually eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival
- كَعْكَة اَلْقَمَر
mooncake in Malay
- Chinese pastry usually eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival
- kuih bulan
mooncake in Indonesian
- Chinese pastry usually eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival
- kue bulan
mooncake in Thai
- Chinese pastry usually eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival
- ขนมไหว้พระจันทร์ kà-nǒm-wâai-prá-jan
More languagesFewer languages
- mooncake in Vietnamese
- bánh trung thu
- mooncake in Myanmar
- လမုန့် la.mun.
Examples of mooncake in a sentence
- During the year we gathered together in the coolie room a few times to celebrate certain festive occasions, like the Ghost Month or the Mooncake Festival.1994, Claire Chiang, “Female Migrants in Singapore: Towards a Strategy of Pragmatism and Coping”, in Maria Jaschok, Suzanne Miers, editors...
- [S]he just said, 'The mooncake, if don't eat, must throw away.1997, Hwee Hwee Tan, Foreign Bodies […], 1st trade paperback edition, New York, N.Y.: Washington Square Press, Pocket Books, published...
Forms of mooncake
| plural | mooncakes |
|---|---|
| alternative form | moon cake |
| alternative form | moon-cake |
Origin of mooncake
From moon + cake, a calque of Mandarin 月餅 /月饼 (yuèbíng, “mooncake”), from 月 (yuè, “moon”) + 餅 /饼 (bíng, “pastry; biscuit, cookie”), probably because the pastry’s traditional round shape resembles the full moon visible during the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Words formed from mooncake
Phrases with mooncake
Questions about mooncake
- What does mooncake mean?
- Mooncake means a rich, dense Chinese pastry traditionally filled with lotus seed paste and nowadays with a variety of other fillings, usually eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival (on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar; early September to early October).
- What is mooncake in Arabic?
- Mooncake in Arabic is كَعْكَة اَلْقَمَر. See Mooncake meaning in Arabic.
- How do you use mooncake in a sentence?
- During the year we gathered together in the coolie room a few times to celebrate certain festive occasions, like the Ghost Month or the Mooncake Festival.
- What part of speech is mooncake?
- Mooncake is a noun.
- How do you pronounce mooncake?
- Mooncake is pronounced /ˈmuːnkeɪk/ (UK).
- What is the plural of mooncake?
- The plural of mooncake is mooncakes.
Words near mooncake in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mooncake (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-mooncake.wav.
Cite this entry: “mooncake.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mooncake. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.