pancake
/ˈpæn.keɪk/
pancake noun: an thin batter cake similar to a crepe, typically unleavened.
Noun
pancake (countable and uncountable, plural pancakes)
- An thin batter cake similar to a crepe, typically unleavened.
- A leavened, thicker, fluffier cake.
- Mrs. America is holding a plate of pancakes in one hand and a fork with a slice of pancake in the other.2001, Alice A. Deck, ““Now Then—Who Said Biscuits?” The Black Woman Cook as Fetish in American Advertising, 1905–1953”, in Sherrie A. Inness, editor, Kitchen Culture in America: Popular...
- A kind of makeup, consisting of a thick layer of a compressed powder.
- And us, me wearing pancake with my eyebrows recently plucked archly, done by Little Amber, the beauty-school student quean, in Bryant Park.1984 April 14, Freddie Greenfield, “Spoiling the View”, in Gay Community News, page 19
- A type of throw, usually with a ring where the prop is thrown in such a way that it rotates round an axis of the diameter of the prop.
- have been working on pancake throws with rings for the past few months and I have been trying to make the throws perfectly spun and as consistent as possible.2004, Beinn Muir <bm260@nospam4me.cam.ac.uk>, “Ring juggling: pancake throws”, in rec.juggling (Usenet)
- Anything very thin and flat.
- pancake lens
- Most of the electrons would pass through the hadron pancake with no interaction, but a few would collide […]2004, William H. Cropper, Great Physicists
- Composite leather made of scraps, glue and board, by extension of (4), material originally used for insoles, but later used also for heels and even soles.
- &hellip in the poorer grades the heel is made of scrap leather and leather board or pulp, finished with a solid leather top lift. The composite material, called pancake, is made by an operative, usually a girl, called a pancake-maker; it is used sometimes for soles as well as heels.1903, Davis Rich Dewey, Twelfth Census of the United States: Special report: Employees and Wages, page 1200
- A box on which an actor stands to make them appear taller.
- A defensive play in which the ball bounces off the top of a hand that has been pressed flat against the floor.
- An attractive young woman.
- Damon Runyon, The Brakeman's Daughter
'To tell the truth,' The Humming Bird says, 'I neglect these details, because,' he says, 'I am already dated up to go out with Big False Face to-night to call on a doll who is daffy to meet me. Otherwise,' he says, 'I will undoubtedly make arrangements to see...
- Damon Runyon, The Brakeman's Daughter
Verb
pancake (third-person singular simple present pancakes, present participle pancaking, simple past and past participle pancaked)
- To make a pancake landing.
- To collapse one floor after another.
- To flatten violently.
- Poor old Sleepy suffered from an on-duty head injury he'd got by chasing a Corvette on a police motorcycle, ending up like a pancaked roadkill with half his scalp flapping in the backwash of freeway commuters[…]2011, Joseph Wambaugh, Floaters
- To lie out flat, like a pancake; sploot.
Proper noun capitalized: Pancake
Pancake
- A surname.
pancake meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
pancake in Hindi
- thin batter cake
- पैनकेक painkek
pancake in Tamil
- thin batter cake
- தோசை tōcai
pancake in Marathi
- thin batter cake
- पॅनकेक pĕnkek
pancake in Urdu
- thin batter cake
- پَینْکیک painkek, پَین کیک
More languagesFewer languages
- pancake in Bengali
- প্যানকেক pênokek
- pancake in Telugu
- దోశ dōśa
- pancake in Malayalam
- എത്രനാള് etranāḷŭ
- pancake in Kannada
- ಪ್ಯಾನ್ಕೇಕ್ pyānkēk
- pancake in Tagalog
- pankeyk
- pancake in Arabic
- فَطِيرَة faṭīra
- pancake in Malay
- pankek
- pancake in Indonesian
- kue dadar, panekuk
- pancake in Thai
- แพนเค้ก pɛɛn-kéek
- pancake in Vietnamese
- bánh nướng chảo, bánh kếp
- pancake in Myanmar
- ပန်ကိတ် pankit, ညာတရံ nyata.ram, ပူရီ puri, အာပုံ apum
Examples of pancake in a sentence
- One pillar gave, then more, and suddenly the whole floor pancaked onto the floor below.
- To the dismay of his mother, the boy put his finger into the pancake batter.
- He was out of pancake mix so he had to make the batter from scratch.
Synonyms of pancake
- crêpe
- crepe
- flapjack
- griddlecake
- griddle cake
- hotcake
- hot cake
- batter cake
- battercake
- batty cake
4 more synonymsFewer synonyms
- flitter
- flitter cake
- fritter
- American pancake
Forms of pancake
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | pancakes |
| alternative form | pan cake |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | pancakes |
| present participle | pancaking |
| past participle | pancaked |
| past | pancaked |
Origin of pancake
Inherited from Middle English pancake, panne cake, pankake, ponkake. By surface analysis, pan + cake. Perhaps adapted from Middle Low German pankôke, pannekôke, from Old Saxon *pannakōko (suggested by derivatives Old Saxon pannakōkilo and pannakōkilīn), where the compound is much older; compare Old High German phankuohho (8th century), whence Middle High German phankuoche, German Pfannkuchen (“pancake”); further Saterland Frisian Ponkouke, Ponkuuke (“pancake”), West Frisian pankoek (“pancake”), Dutch pannenkoek (“pancake”), German Low German Pannkook (“pancake”). The juggling sense is by analogy with a pancake being tossed in a pan.
German surname, Americanized and translated from Pfannkuch, Pfannkuche, also found in north/Low German as Pannkoke, Pankauke, as well as Dutch Pannekoek. All mean "pancake", and could be from a nickname for someone who likes them, or an occupational surname for someone who worked at an establishment that famously served them.
Words formed from pancake
- American pancake
- flapcake
- flat as a pancake
- French pancake
- German pancake
- ice pancake
- pancake bond
- Pancake Day
- pancake engine
- pancake ice
- pancake landing
- pancake lens
- pancakelike
- pancake-maker
- pancake number
- pancake slug
- pancake sorting
- pancake syndrome
- pancake syrup
- pancake theorem
- pancake tortoise
- pancake turner
- pancakey
- panstick
- potato pancake
- scallion pancake
- Scotch pancake
- sea pancake
Phrases with pancake
Questions about pancake
- What does pancake mean?
- Pancake means an thin batter cake similar to a crepe, typically unleavened.
- What is pancake in Hindi?
- Pancake in Hindi is पैनकेक (painkek). See Pancake meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is pancake?
- Pancake can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce pancake?
- Pancake is pronounced /ˈpæn.keɪk/.
- What is the plural of pancake?
- The plural of pancake is pancakes.
Words near pancake in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pancake (page history and authors); Pancake (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-pancake.ogg.
Cite this entry: “pancake.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pancake. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.