cache

1 of 2

noun

ˈkash 

1

a

: a hiding place especially for concealing and preserving provisions or implements

b

: a secure place of storage

discovered a cache of weapons

2

: something hidden or stored in a cache

The cache consisted of documents and private letters.

3

: a computer memory with very short access time used for storage of frequently or recently used instructions or data

called also cache memory

cache

2 of 2

verb

cached; caching

transitive verb

: to place (something) in a cache: such as

a

: to place or store (something) in a hidden or secure place for safety or concealment

cache camp supplies by a lake

coins cached in a teapot

b

computers : to place (instructions or data) in cache memory for temporary storage

caching websites to speed up future retrieval

Did you know?

Cash and Cache

Cache and cash are homophones (words that are pronounced alike but have different meanings, origins, or spelling) whose likeness in sound may lead to perplexity.

Cache primarily refers to a thing that is hidden or stored somewhere, or to the place where it is hidden. It has recently taken on another common meaning, “short-term computer memory where information is stored for easy retrieval.” Cash, on the other hand, is most often used in the sense “ready money.”

If you find yourself confused by these words, remember that you can store cash in a cache, but you can't do the reverse. Be mindful, too, that if you run out of cash you won't be able to buy something, but if you're short on cache, your computer won’t work.

Synonyms

Noun

• deposit
• hoard
• reserve
• store

Verb

• hoard
• lay away
• lay by
• lay in
• lay up
• put by
• salt away
• squirrel (away)
• stash
• stockpile
• store
• stow
• treasure

Examples of cache in a Sentence

Noun

a weapons cache used by terrorists

Police found a cache of stolen cars in the woods.

Her new laptop has one megabyte of cache.

Verb

an eccentric who cached money in odd places, such as under the boards of the floor

cached the fugitives in their cellar until they could make their way to Canada

Recent Examples on the Web

Noun

The war is especially cruel because the fighting is taking place in congested population centers and because the enemy has turned schools, mosques, and hospitals—places where civilians seek shelter—into military command centers, communications hubs, and weapons factories and caches. —Ami Ayalon, Foreign Affairs, 11 Apr. 2024

By the 2000s, a new wave of teeny-bopper pop heavyweights were desperate to branch out and widen the age range of their audience — and therefore their cultural cache as well. —Brittany Spanos, Rolling Stone, 10 Apr. 2024

The team found that when a chickadee stored a seed, hippocampal neurons fired off in a sudden pattern that would later reactivate when the bird retrieved that specific food cache. —Jack Knudson, Discover Magazine, 29 Mar. 2024

Her research was aided by a cache of interviews recorded in the 1970s by Jeremiah Newton, who had planned to write a biography of Candy but never completed the project. —Carolina A. Miranda, Los Angeles Times, 23 Mar. 2024

Indeed, a team that included Stewart found evidence in 2021 that striped hyenas were creating bone caches in the back of the cave. —Isaac Schultz / Gizmodo, Quartz, 18 Apr. 2024

Moving forward, researchers hope to explore whether the barcodes also activate when a bird is simply thinking about retrieving food from a specific cache, before taking any action. —Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Apr. 2024

As these stinking carcasses start to decay, those nutrients go into the soil around trees, creating a nutrient cache for the tree and the cicadas. —Kelli Bender, Peoplemag, 20 Mar. 2024

Guiry and his colleagues are continuing to untangle what this cache of rodent bones can tell us. —Lauren Leffer, Popular Science, 3 Apr. 2024

Verb

This supposition led to a whole bunch of experimentation with Cloudflare page rules and cache rules, increasing the scope of caching. —Lee Hutchinson, Ars Technica, 26 Jan. 2024

Posts were being cached and cleared as required; the front page was being cached and cleared as required; the various /feed/ URLs (vital to the functionality of the Space City Weather app, now on the iOS and Google Play stores!) were being flushed and grabbed as pages were refreshed. —Lee Hutchinson, Ars Technica, 26 Jan. 2024

And caching, too—any website falls apart without caching to do the heavy lifting. —Lee Hutchinson, Ars Technica, 19 July 2023

The Perseverance rover has already cached 10 of these samples. —Chris Impey, Discover Magazine, 27 Oct. 2023

And because cloud gaming is a real-time activity that requires minimal latency, Stadia cannot rely on common techniques such as offline encoding of video files, caching video content in advance along the network path, or taking advantage of video client buffers to smooth out network glitches. —IEEE Spectrum, 22 July 2019

No, wolves do not cache their kills like mountain lions do. —Katie Hill, Outdoor Life, 23 Aug. 2023

Apart from that, technology solutions such as server-side rendering, caching, lightweight frameworks and pruning plugins will go a long way. —Expert Panel®, Forbes, 7 Mar. 2023

Jays are said to cache a kabillion nuts, give or take, every winter, and unerringly remember the location of each one. —Murr Brewster, The Christian Science Monitor, 28 Apr. 2023

Word History

Etymology

Noun

borrowed from North American French, from French, "hiding place," noun derivative of cacher "to hide, conceal," going back to Old French cachier, quaichier "to put away, lock up, cover, remove from view, conceal" (also Middle French cacher "to press, crush"), going back to Vulgar Latin *coācticāre "to press, constrict," from Latin coāctāre "to compel" (frequentative of cōgere "to drive together, collect, compress, compel") + -icāre, verb formative — more at cogent

Note: The etymological sense "to compress, constrict" is not attested for the Old French verb, though it likely existed and is apparent in the prefixed form escachier "to crush and flatten, break by pressing or falling on." From the sense "compress" presumably developed the senses "lock up, cover, put away," and hence "remove from view, conceal," common from the sixteenth century. The sense "to press, crush" is marginally evident in Middle French in areas in contact with Occitan, though it penetrated widely enough to form the basis for the derivative cachet "seal" (see cachet).

Verb

verbal derivative of cache entry 1

First Known Use

Noun

1797, in the meaning defined at sense 1a

Verb

1805, in the meaning defined above

Kids Definition

cache

1 of 2 noun

ˈkash 

1

: a place for hiding, storing, or preserving treasure or supplies

2

: something hidden or stored in a cache

3

: a computer memory with very short access time

cache

2 of 2 verb

cached; caching

: to hide or store in a cache