take the cake

noun

a sweet, baked, breadlike food, made with or without shortening, and usually containing flour, sugar, baking powder or soda, eggs, and liquid flavoring.

a flat, thin mass of bread, especially unleavened bread.

pancake; griddlecake.

a shaped or molded mass of other food: a fish cake.

a shaped or compressed mass: a cake of soap; a cake of ice.

Animal Husbandry. a compacted block of soybeans, cottonseeds, or linseeds from which the oil has been pressed, usually used as a feed or feed supplement for cattle.

verb (used with object)

to form into a crust or compact mass.

00:10

Take the cake is always a great word to know.

So is flibbertigibbet. Does it mean:

a chattering or flighty, light-headed person.

an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.

LEARN MORE UNUSUAL WORDS WITH WORD DYNAMO...

verb (used without object)

to become formed into a crust or compact mass.

Idioms

a piece of cake, Informal. something easily done: She thought her first solo flight was a piece of cake.

10.

take the cake, Informal.

to surpass all others, especially in some undesirable quality; be extraordinary or unusual: His arrogance takes the cake.

to win first prize.

Origin:
1200–50; Middle English < Old Norse kaka; akin to Middle English kechel little cake, German Kuchen; see cookie

Related forms

cak·y, cak·ey, adjective

non·cak·ing, adjective, noun

un·cake, verb (used with object), un·caked, un·cak·ing.

Synonyms
8. harden, solidify, dry, congeal.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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Link To take the cake

Collins

World English Dictionary

cake (keɪk)

—n
1.	a baked food, usually in loaf or layer form, typically made from a mixture of flour, sugar, and eggs
2.	a flat thin mass of bread, esp unleavened bread
3.	a shaped mass of dough or other food of similar consistency: a fish cake
4.	a mass, slab, or crust of a solidified or compressed substance, as of soap or ice
5.	have one's cake and eat it to enjoy both of two desirable but incompatible alternatives
6.	informal go like hot cakes, sell like hot cakes to be sold very quickly or in large quantities
7.	informal piece of cake something that is easily achieved or obtained
8.	informal take the cake to surpass all others, esp in stupidity, folly, etc
9.	informal the whole or total of something that is to be shared or divided: the miners are demanding a larger slice of the cake; that is a fair method of sharing the cake

—vb
10.	(tr) to cover with a hard layer; encrust: the hull was caked with salt
11.	to form or be formed into a hardened mass

[C13: from Old Norse kaka; related to Danish kage, German Kuchen]

'cakey

—*adj*

'caky

—*adj*

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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Etymonline

Word Origin & History

cake

early 13c., from O.N. kaka "cake," from W.Gmc. *kokon- (cf. M.Du. koke, Du. koek, O.H.G. huohho, Ger. Kuchen), from PIE base *gag-, *gog- "something round, lump of something." Not related to L. coquere "to cook," as formerly supposed. Replaced its O.E. cognate, coecel. Originally (until early 15c.) "a

flat, round loaf of bread." Let them eat cake is from Rousseau's "Confessions," in reference to an incident c.1740, when it was already proverbial, long before Marie Antoinette. The "cake" in question was not a confection, but a poor man's food.

"What man, I trow ye raue, Wolde ye bothe eate your cake and haue your cake?" ["The Proverbs & Epigrams of John Heywood," 1562]

cake

c.1600, from cake (n.). Caked "thickly encrusted" is from 1922.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
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American Heritage

Cultural Dictionary

take the cake definition

To be the most outstanding; sometimes used in a derogatory sense: “When it comes to eating like a pig, Gordy really takes the cake.”

Slang Dictionary

cake definition

n.
money. (From bread, dough.) : I can't scrape together enough cake to do the job.
Go to cakes. :

Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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Easton

Bible Dictionary

Cake definition

Cakes made of wheat or barley were offered in the temple. They were salted, but unleavened (Ex. 29:2; Lev. 2:4). In idolatrous worship thin cakes or wafers were offered "to the queen of heaven" (Jer. 7:18; 44:19). Pancakes are described in 2 Sam. 13:8, 9. Cakes mingled with oil and baked in the oven are mentioned in Lev. 2:4, and "wafers unleavened anointed with oil," in Ex. 29:2; Lev. 8:26; 1 Chr. 23:29. "Cracknels," a kind of crisp cakes, were among the things Jeroboam directed his wife to take with her when she went to consult Ahijah the prophet at Shiloh (1 Kings 14:3). Such hard cakes were carried by the Gibeonites when they came to Joshua (9:5, 12). They described their bread as "mouldy;" but the Hebrew word _nikuddim_, here used, ought rather to be rendered "hard as biscuit." It is rendered "cracknels" in 1 Kings 14:3. The ordinary bread, when kept for a few days, became dry and excessively hard. The Gibeonites pointed to this hardness of their bread as an evidence that they had come a long journey. We read also of honey-cakes (Ex. 16:31), "cakes of figs" (1 Sam. 25:18), "cake" as denoting a whole piece of bread (1 Kings 17:12), and "a [round] cake of barley bread" (Judg. 7:13). In Lev. 2 is a list of the different kinds of bread and cakes which were fit for offerings.

Easton's 1897 Bible Dictionary
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American Heritage

Idioms & Phrases

take the cake

Be the most outstanding in some respect, either the best or the worst. For example, That advertising slogan really took the cake, or What a mess they made of the concertthat takes the cake! This expression alludes to a contest called a cakewalk, in which a cake is the prize. Its figurative use, for something either excellent or outrageously bad, dates from the 1880s.

Matching Quote

"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain."

-unknown author

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