pancake

plural pancakes · alternative pan cake

1. A thin batter cake fried in a pan or on a griddle in oil or butter; in particular:
   1. EnglandcountableuncountableAn thin batter cake similar to a crepe, typically unleavened.
   2. AustraliaCanadaScotlandUScountableuncountableA leavened, thicker, fluffier cake.

      Mrs. America is holding a plate of pancakes in one hand and a fork with a slice of pancake in the other.

      2001, Alice A. Deck, ““Now Then—Who Said Biscuits?” The Black Woman Cook as Fetish in American Advertising, 1905–1953”, in Sherrie A. Inness, editor, Kitchen Culture in America: Popular Representations of Food, Gender, and Race, Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, →ISBN, page 88

2. uncountableentertainmentA kind of makeup, consisting of a thick layer of a compressed powder.

   And us, me wearing pancake with my eyebrows recently plucked archly, done by Little Amber, the beauty-school student quean, in Bryant Park.

   1984 April 14, Freddie Greenfield, “Spoiling the View”, in Gay Community News, page 19

3. countableartsA type of throw, usually with a ring where the prop is thrown in such a way that it rotates round an axis of the diameter of the prop.

   have been working on pancake throws with rings for the past few months and I have been trying to make the throws perfectly spun and as consistent as possible.

   2004, Beinn Muir <bm260@nospam4me.cam.ac.uk>, “Ring juggling: pancake throws”, in rec.juggling (Usenet)

4. countableAnything very thin and flat.

   pancake lens

   1 more example

   Most of the electrons would pass through the hadron pancake with no interaction, but a few would collide […]

   2004, William H. Cropper, Great Physicists

5. uncountableComposite leather made of scraps, glue and board, by extension of (4), material originally used for insoles, but later used also for heels and even soles.

   &hellip in the poorer grades the heel is made of scrap leather and leather board or pulp, finished with a solid leather top lift. The composite material, called pancake, is made by an operative, usually a girl, called a pancake-maker; it is used sometimes for soles as well as heels.

   1903, Davis Rich Dewey, Twelfth Census of the United States: Special report: Employees and Wages, page 1200

6. countableslangbroadcastingA box on which an actor stands to make them appear taller.
7. countableball gamesA defensive play in which the ball bounces off the top of a hand that has been pressed flat against the floor.
8. UScountabledatedslangAn attractive young woman.

   1 more example

   Damon Runyon, The Brakeman's Daughter 'To tell the truth,' The Humming Bird says, 'I neglect these details, because,' he says, 'I am already dated up to go out with Big False Face to-night to call on a doll who is daffy to meet me. Otherwise,' he says, 'I will undoubtedly make arrangements to see more of this pancake I just save from rack and ruin.'

present singular third person pancakes · participle present pancaking · participle past pancaked · past pancaked · alternative pan cake

1. intransitiveTo make a pancake landing.
2. demolitionbusinessTo collapse one floor after another.
3. transitiveTo flatten violently.

   Poor old Sleepy suffered from an on-duty head injury he'd got by chasing a Corvette on a police motorcycle, ending up like a pancaked roadkill with half his scalp flapping in the backwash of freeway commuters[…]

   2011, Joseph Wambaugh, Floaters

4. intransitiveTo lie out flat, like a pancake; sploot.

1. A surname.