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.

• petit gâteau

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:

  (file)

• 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