birthday cake
48
1.0
- noun
- /ˈbɜrθdeɪ keɪk/
:
pastel de cumpleaños
- John enters, carrying a small birthday cake glowing with candles.
OK, I'm going to make a birthday cake for the iPad.
- OK, I'm going to make a birthday cake for the iPad.
- You walk out with a birthday cake and everybody's like, we don't care.
- Like if they preferred savory things to sweet things, they don't love birthday cake.
- We may look back at the pictures of a picnic on a summer day or a birthday cake and remember that was a good day.
- They said no and I opened my birthday presents in silence and I also ate the birthday cake in silence.
- We'll come wearing this and eat all the birthday cakes and like, punched some chairs.
Examples
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Once inside, the families would be treated to a birthday cake and a private show by Willy Weasel.
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You can eat some of my birthday cake.
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A little bit, but you definitely get birthday cake and it's pretty good.
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It's time to cut your birthday cake.
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You want some birthday cake?
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On her birthday, we get a little birthday cake and balloon; we will do that every year.
Academic text (2011) -
After about an hour, Amy cut the traditional raspberry-filled chocolate birthday cake and made a short speech.
Fiction book (1996) -
And for dessert last night, we had leftover birthday cake from my little boy's party.
Blog text (32) -
They said no and I opened my birthday presents in silence and I also ate the birthday cake in silence.
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It's time to cut your birthday cake and celebrate with friends.
How Decorated
48
1.0
208
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a cake made or decorated for a birthday' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'birthday' (the day of someone's birth/celebration) with 'cake' (a sweet baked dessert). This compositional, literal pattern is cross-linguistically common and would be immediately understandable to a B1 learner who knows both constituent words.
Etymology
Birthday cake comes from the simple idea of a cake made for someone's birthday. People put candles on the cake for each year and blow them out to 'make a wish', so it became the special cake used to 'celebrate' a birthday.