pancake

• pan cake

Inherited from Middle English pancake, panne cake, pankake, ponkake, equivalent to 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.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpæn.keɪk/, /ˈpæŋ.keɪk/

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pancake (countable and uncountable, plural pancakes)

1. A thin batter cake fried in a pan or on a griddle in oil or butter; in particular:
   1. In England, an often unleavened cake similar to a crepe.
   2. In the US (and e.g. Scotland), a leavened, thicker, fluffier cake.
      • 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 Representations of Food, Gender, and Race, Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, →ISBN, page 88:

        Mrs. America is holding a plate of pancakes in one hand and a fork with a slice of pancake in the other.

2. (theater) A kind of makeup, consisting of a thick layer of a compressed powder.
   • 1984 April 14, Freddie Greenfield, “Spoiling the View”, in Gay Community News, page 19:

     And us, me wearing pancake with my eyebrows recently plucked archly, done by Little Amber, the beauty-school student quean, in Bryant Park.

3. (juggling) 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.
   • 2004, Beinn Muir <bm260@nospam4me.cam.ac.uk>, “Ring juggling: pancake throws”, in rec.juggling‎ (Usenet):

     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.

4. Anything very thin and flat.

   pancake lens

   • 2004, William H. Cropper, Great Physicists:

     Most of the electrons would pass through the hadron pancake with no interaction, but a few would collide […]

5. 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.
   • 1903, Davis Rich Dewey, Twelfth Census of the United States: Special report: Employees and Wages, page 1200:

     &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.

6. (film, slang) A box on which an actor stands to make them appear taller.
7. (volleyball) A defensive play in which the ball bounces off the top of a hand that has been pressed flat against the floor.

• (thin fried batter cake): crêpe/crepe, flapjack, griddle cake, hotcake, pikelet

pancake (third-person singular simple present pancakes, present participle pancaking, simple past and past participle pancaked)

1. (intransitive) To make a pancake landing.
2. (construction, demolition) To collapse one floor after another.
3. (transitive) To flatten violently.
   • 2011, Joseph Wambaugh, Floaters:

     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 […]

• blintz
• okonomiyaki
• waffle

• cakepan

• IPA^(key): /pan.kɛk/

pancake m (plural pancakes)

1. pancake

• “pancake”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• ponkake, pankake, panne cake

From panne (“pan”) +‎ cake. Perhaps adapted from Middle Low German pankôke, pannekôke; see pancake.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpankaːk(ə)/

pancake

1. pancake (kind of fried cake)

• English: pancake (see there for further descendants)
• Scots: pancake

• “panne-cāke, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-07-05.

pancake f (plural pancakes)

1. Dated form of panqueca.