kex

• kix

From Middle English kex. Origin unknown; but compare Welsh cecys (“hollow stalks”) and Welsh cegid (“hemlock”), apparently from the same source as Latin cicūta (“hemlock”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /kɛks/
• Rhymes: -ɛks

kex (plural kexes)

1. (obsolete or dialectal) The dried stem of certain large herbaceous plants.
   • 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles:

     "I suppose you'll want a dish o' tay, or victuals of some sort, hey? […] I should be as dry as kex wi' travelling so far."

2. (obsolete, botany) A plant having such a stem; a weed, a kecksy.
3. (rare) A dry husk or covering.
   • 1972, Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things, McGraw-Hill, published 1972, pages 100–101:

     On the bedside table a new package of cigarettes and a traveling clock had for neighbor a nicely wrapped box containing the green figurine of a girl skier which shone through the double kix.

From Danish kiks (“cracker”) (older keks), in turn borrowed from English cakes, plural of cake, Middle English cake, kake, which was itself borrowed from the ancestor of Icelandic, Old Norse: kex is therefore a doublet of kaka. Further back from Proto-Germanic *kakǭ.^[1]

• IPA^(key): /cʰɛks/, /cʰɛxs/

kex n (genitive singular kex, nominative plural kex)

1. cookie, cracker, (UK) biscuit

• kixe, kyx, kysk

Unknown. Possibly from a Celtic and/or substrate language. (Can this⁽⁺⁾ etymology be sourced?)

• IPA^(key): /kɛks/, /kiks/

kex (plural kexis)

1. Any dried stem of a plant with a hollow interior.
2. (rare) A plant having a hollow stem; a member of the family Umbelliferae.

• English: kex, kix
• Scots: kex

• “kex(e, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-10-12.

• käx (dated)

From English cakes, plural of cake, from Middle English cake, from Old Norse kaka (whence also kaka), from Proto-Germanic *kakǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *gog-.

The reason why the word is lent in the plural is because it is easier to apply the Swedish declension patterns with cakes than with cake. Compare the similar loans räls and muffins. Compare Danish kiks (similarly borrowed from English).

• IPA^(key): (Svealand, Norrland) /kɛks/, (Götaland) /ɕɛks/

kex n

1. a cracker, (UK) a biscuit

   ost och kex

   cheese and crackers / biscuits

2. (slang) someone physically attractive

   Tjena kexet, står du här och smular?

   Hello biscuit, are you standing here crumbling?

(Tongue-in-cheek) debate over pronunciation – see IPA above.

• → Finnish: keksi

• rån (“wafer”)

• kex in Svensk ordbok (SO)
• kex in Svenska Akademiens ordlista (SAOL)
• kex in Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB)
• Slangopedia