"cake walk" meaning in English

See cake walk in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: en-au-cake walk.ogg [Australia] Forms: cake walks [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} cake walk (plural cake walks)
  1. A type of dance originating in the United States in the 19th century.
    Sense id: en-cake_walk-en-noun-QzKhRyhx Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 40 40 20
  2. From the mid 1900s, a game at a fair or party in which people walk around a numbered circle along to music. When the music is stopped, the caller draws a number from a jar and whoever is standing on or closest to that number wins a cake. Synonyms: cake-walk
    Sense id: en-cake_walk-en-noun-drZPPpCV Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 40 40 20
  3. (idiomatic) Something extremely easy. Tags: idiomatic
    Sense id: en-cake_walk-en-noun-0jpIltIM Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 40 40 20

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for cake walk meaning in English (3.1kB)

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  "forms": [
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      "form": "cake walks",
      "tags": [
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      "expansion": "cake walk (plural cake walks)",
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  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
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      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "40 40 20",
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          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1881, A.L. Bassett, “Our monthly gossip”, in Lippincott's magazine, volume 28, page 208",
          "text": "It is called the cake-walk. A large cake is prepared for the occasion, and, when the invited guests arrive on the gala evening, each young man selects a partner for the walk. After a great deal of merriment and confusion, the couples take their places on the floor and begin to march around the room singing a hymn (for the church-members are not allowed to indulge in secular music) to a good marching tune, while the matrons and married men look on and criticise the promenaders, join in the chorus, and beat time with hands and feet. When tired at last of the walking-match, the cake is duly awarded to the most graceful couple, by whom it is carried home after the supper which closes the entertainment.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A type of dance originating in the United States in the 19th century."
      ],
      "id": "en-cake_walk-en-noun-QzKhRyhx"
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    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "40 40 20",
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        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1945, Robert L. Kilzer, “Cake-Walk Earns Money for Student Activities”, in Educational Reading Service: School activities, volume 18, page 340",
          "text": "... each of the marchers took his place beside the number nearest to him.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "From the mid 1900s, a game at a fair or party in which people walk around a numbered circle along to music. When the music is stopped, the caller draws a number from a jar and whoever is standing on or closest to that number wins a cake."
      ],
      "id": "en-cake_walk-en-noun-drZPPpCV",
      "synonyms": [
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          "_dis1": "0 100 0",
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1922, New York Athletic Club, “Easy for Romig”, in The Winged foot, volume 33, page 38",
          "text": "The three mile run was a cake walk for \"Blondy\" Romig, of Penn State.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something extremely easy."
      ],
      "id": "en-cake_walk-en-noun-0jpIltIM",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) Something extremely easy."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
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    }
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  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-cake walk.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/6/68/En-au-cake_walk.ogg/En-au-cake_walk.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/En-au-cake_walk.ogg",
      "tags": [
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{
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  "forms": [
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      "tags": [
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  "senses": [
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      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1881, A.L. Bassett, “Our monthly gossip”, in Lippincott's magazine, volume 28, page 208",
          "text": "It is called the cake-walk. A large cake is prepared for the occasion, and, when the invited guests arrive on the gala evening, each young man selects a partner for the walk. After a great deal of merriment and confusion, the couples take their places on the floor and begin to march around the room singing a hymn (for the church-members are not allowed to indulge in secular music) to a good marching tune, while the matrons and married men look on and criticise the promenaders, join in the chorus, and beat time with hands and feet. When tired at last of the walking-match, the cake is duly awarded to the most graceful couple, by whom it is carried home after the supper which closes the entertainment.",
          "type": "quotation"
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      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A type of dance originating in the United States in the 19th century."
      ]
    },
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      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1945, Robert L. Kilzer, “Cake-Walk Earns Money for Student Activities”, in Educational Reading Service: School activities, volume 18, page 340",
          "text": "... each of the marchers took his place beside the number nearest to him.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "From the mid 1900s, a game at a fair or party in which people walk around a numbered circle along to music. When the music is stopped, the caller draws a number from a jar and whoever is standing on or closest to that number wins a cake."
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        {
          "ref": "1922, New York Athletic Club, “Easy for Romig”, in The Winged foot, volume 33, page 38",
          "text": "The three mile run was a cake walk for \"Blondy\" Romig, of Penn State.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something extremely easy."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) Something extremely easy."
      ],
      "tags": [
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    }
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      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/En-au-cake_walk.ogg",
      "tags": [
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  "synonyms": [
    {
      "word": "cake-walk"
    }
  ],
  "wikipedia": [
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  "word": "cake walk"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.