Christmas cake
1
2.1
- noun
- /ˈkrɪs·məs keɪk/
:
pastel de Navidad
- For dessert, we enjoyed a slice of Christmas cake filled with dried fruits and nuts.
Examples
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I got a Christmas cake from home today.
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Don't forget to bring some Christmas cake when you come by, alright?
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Katharine brings him over a cup of tea and a plate with Christmas cake on it.
Fiction book (1996) -
Traditional Christmas cake has to mature, helped along by regular weekly feedings of brandy.
Blog text (28) -
Every year, my grandmother bakes a rich Christmas cake covered in icing and marzipan.
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At the holiday party, the centerpiece was a beautifully decorated Christmas cake that everyone admired.
Synonyms
25
1.4
A rich cake with dried fruit, nuts, and pieces of citrus peel, often served at holidays
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase combines 'Christmas' (the holiday) and 'cake' (a sweet baked dessert), so its meaning — a cake associated with or eaten at Christmas — is directly derivable from the constituents. This holiday + food composition is cross-linguistically common and follows a straightforward noun-noun modification pattern, so a B1 learner who knows both words will readily understand it.
Etymology
Christmas cake comes from old holiday meals: families baked a special rich cake full of dried fruit and warm spices to eat at Christmas. Because it was the cake for that day and was often covered with icing and decorations, the name now means 'a rich fruitcake usually covered with icing and marzipan'.