Other forms: muffins
A muffin is a small domed cake baked in a paper case. A blueberry muffin, a muffin tin, coffee and a muffin.
The American kind is a sweet cake and the English muffin is a flat yeasted bread cooked on a griddle, which is why the two countries picture entirely different things. The batter must be barely mixed or it goes tough. Note that the word probably came from a Low German name for a small cake.
1nounmuffinA small domed cake baked in a paper case.
“She had a blueberry muffin and a coffee for breakfast.”
muffin is a baked good.
Muffin probably comes from a Low German word for a small cake. Its exact route into English is uncertain.
Middle Low German
muffe — small pastry
Low German
Muffe
English, today
muffin
From earlier moofin, probably a diminutive of Low German Muffe "small cake"; Muffen, from Middle Low German muffe (“small pastry”). An alternative, and phonologically less plausible theory suggests a connection to moflet. Sense “vulva” influenced by muff.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA