Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

cupcake

UK/ˈkʌpkeɪk/US/ˈkʌpkeɪk/
nounA2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,603 of 15,258mostly spoken

Other forms: cupcakes

A cupcake is a tiny cake for one person, with cream on top. Frosted cupcakes, bake cupcakes, a birthday cupcake.

The name comes from the measuring, not the shape: the old recipe was a cup of each ingredient, which anybody could remember without scales. The British fairy cake is its smaller and less iced cousin. Note the compound of cup and cake.

Marc-Lautenbacher · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of cupcake

  1. 1nouncupcakeA small individual cake with icing on top.A2+

    “She baked chocolate cupcakes with pink icing for the school party.”

cupcake is a cake.

Where it comes from

Cup plus cake, from a recipe measured in cups of each ingredient rather than weighed.

From cup + cake.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Food & Drink

Practise this word

cupcake in the wild

  • The show, which is based on creating unique and professional-style cupcakes, was hosted by Justin Willman and later by Jonathan Bennett.

    Cupcake Wars

  • Sprinkles Cupcakes was a nationwide cupcake bakery chain established in 2005 and closed in 2025.

    Sprinkles Cupcakes

  • Velazquez did not intend to open a cupcake shop, but the demand for the baked good eclipsed the other offerings.

    Baked & Wired

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.