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Glite Dictionary
johnny cake

johnny cake

1 8.0
A flat cornmeal cake cooked like a pancake on a griddle
  • noun
  • /ˈdʒɒni keɪk/
  • US
translation icon : tortita de maíz
  • At the local festival, I tried a delicious johnny cake topped with fresh berries.

Examples

  • Johnny cake and devil's food and sassafras tea

    The Sugarland Express (1974)

  • I think the world doesn't know Jell-o from johnny cakes.

    Overnight Delivery (1998)

  • If you do, your rations'll be Johnny cake and devil's food and sassafras tea

    The Sugarland Express (1974)

  • For breakfast, we enjoyed warm johnny cakes served with butter and syrup.

  • The recipe for johnny cakes calls for just cornmeal, water, and a pinch of salt.

Synonyms

pancake
vsjohnny cake
316 1.0

A thin, flat fried cake made from batter often eaten for breakfast

uses cornmeal and the griddle style rather than general batter recipes
corn cake
vsjohnny cake
  • US
1 2.0

A flat food like a pancake made from cornmeal and cooked on a pan

focuses on the griddle pancake style rather than baked preparation
johnnycake
vsjohnny cake
  • US
1 9.1

A flat cornbread pancake cooked on a griddle and often eaten for breakfast in New England

is the same but written as two words
journey cake
vsjohnny cake
  • Archaic
8.0

A thin cornbread cooked like a pancake on a hot pan

includes the same food but also appears in parts of the Caribbean
Shawnee cake
vsjohnny cake
  • US
9.9

A flat bread made from cornmeal by the Shawnee people

is the general regional food not limited to one cultural origin
corncake
vsjohnny cake
  • US
3.0

A small flat cake made from ground corn, usually fried or baked and served as a side

is typically a griddle pancake often eaten on its own rather than as a side

Surface Forms

johnny cake singular
johnny cakes plural

Morphology

johnny + cake

The component 'johnny' is essentially a proper/name-like element with no semantic cue to cornmeal or pancake, while 'cake' only signals a generic baked/food item. Because the specific meaning (a regional cornmeal griddle cake) is lexicalized and culturally specific rather than compositional, a B1 learner who only knows the parts would not reliably infer the MWE's meaning.

Etymology

Johnny cake may come from an old name, 'journey cake', because these flat cakes made from cornmeal were easy for travelers to carry. They were cooked on a hot pan and kept well, so the name came to mean the simple cornmeal pancake we still eat today.