gâteau

gâteau (countable and uncountable, plural gâteaux or gâteaus)

1. Alternative form of gateau
   • 1993, Christopher Evans, Aztec Century, London: Gollancz, published 2013, →ISBN:

     We were served pancakes with smoked salmon, followed by thick slices of gâteau.

   • 2016, Martha Grimes, Ken Grimes, Double Double: A Dual Memoir of Alcoholism, page 88:

     Julie was a froster, the glamour job at the factory. She wore her cute white hat cocked at a jaunty angle while working a big white bag of frosting, twisting it rapidly in her hands to create the various designs on top of the gâteaux.

Inherited from Middle French gasteau, from Old French gastel, from Frankish *wastil, from Proto-Germanic *wastilaz, from Proto-Indo-European *wes- (“to eat; consume”). Compare Old English wist (“food; provision; feast”) and obsolete English wastel, Sicilian guasteḍḍa (“a kind of round bread”).

• IPA^(key): /ɡa.to/, /ɡɑ.to/

• audio

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• Homophone: gâteaux
• Rhymes: -o

gâteau m (plural gâteaux)

1. a sponge cake, i.e. a cake made with a chemical leavening agent (e.g. baking powder), making it light and airy (as opposed to a denser torte)
2. (Louisiana) a cookie

• pâtisserie

• “gâteau”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• augeât