mooncake

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points
16
Words With Friends
19
Letters
8
Pronunciation
/ˈmuːnkeɪk/
See all 2 pronunciations
/ˈmuːnkeɪk/ · /ˈmunkeɪk/

Definition of mooncake

1 sense · 1 part of speech · etymology included

noun

  1. A rich, dense Chinese pastry traditionally filled with lotus seed paste and nowadays with a variety of other fillings, usually eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival (on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar; early September to early October).
    “Mei-kwei 玫丨 [i.e., 玫瑰] name of a pearl; also of a round cake, called the moon-cake, eaten at the harvest moon; […]”
    “[M]aybe his mother has promised him a mango or a moon-cake if he would be good; […]”

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

From moon + cake, a calque of Mandarin 月餅 /月饼 (yuèbíng, “mooncake”), from 月 (yuè, “moon”) + 餅 /饼 (bíng, “pastry; biscuit, cookie”), probably because the pastry’s traditional round shape resembles the full moon visible during the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Hooks

1 extension · 1 back

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