cache

noun

\ ˈkash

Definition of cache

(Entry 1 of 2)

1a : 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

verb

cached; caching

Definition of cache (Entry 2 of 2)

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

Synonyms Cash and Cache More Example Sentences Learn More about cache

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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.

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 fugitive slaves in their cellar until they could make their way to Canada

Recent Examples on the Web: Noun

When the law got around to a case against him, investigation would reveal a cache of wedding rings, in addition to his supply of Viagra. — Dorothy Rabinowitz, WSJ, "‘Ministry of Evil: The Twisted Cult of Tony Alamo’ Review: Hell on Earth," 21 Feb. 2019 One of those plaintiffs was the Sierra Club, which ultimately received a cache of emails that helped fuel a series of recent news stories about Pruitt. — Dino Grandoni, Washington Post, "The Energy 202: EPA delays public-records requests to avoid questions about Scott Pruitt, Democrat says," 12 June 2018 Within hours, elite forces from one of Africa’s most powerful militaries had abandoned their base and its cache of heavy weapons, routed by an insurgent army fighting under the familiar black and white flag of Islamic State. ... — Drew Hinshaw, WSJ, "Islamic State, Seeking Next Chapter, Makes Inroads Through West Africa," 3 Feb. 2019 But how could even Mueller, with his cache of explosive secrets, compete with the noise of a news cycle like ours? — James Atlas, Town & Country, "The Year of the Celebrity Super Lawyer," 3 Dec. 2018 But the MacBook Pro 13's 28-watt chip, which includes 128MB of eDRAM cache, could close the gap. — Gordon Mah Ung, PCWorld, "Razer's Blade Stealth gets a long-awaited upgrade to GeForce graphics and a Whiskey Lake CPU," 4 Dec. 2018 Further Reading Cambridge Analytica’s London offices raided by British investigators A member of the UK parliament who recently ordered the seizure of a cache of internal Facebook documents has shown no signs of backing down. — Cyrus Farivar, Ars Technica, "Six4Three exec “panicked” in UK MP’s office, gave up Facebook internal files," 27 Nov. 2018 But yeah, there were a lot of classified documents, highly classified documents, that were among this cache of documents that were on her private server. — Fox News, "TSA program tracks unsuspecting passengers," 31 July 2018 The old case came into play indirectly last week when police knew to be wary of a weapons cache after being called on May 7 to the cul-de-sac where Snyder was staying with his wife. — Dan Morse, Washington Post, "Maryland man who killed 3 in neighbor’s home was subject of 2014 domestic violence case," 14 May 2018

Recent Examples on the Web: Verb

From a technical perspective, the easiest way to set up an AMP system is to cede just a little control of your pages to Google by allowing Google’s caching servers to send your content to users. — Dieter Bohn, The Verge, "Google is giving up some control of the AMP format," 18 Sep. 2018 Project Shield's proxy is built on Google Cloud Platform and also offers caching through Google. — Lily Hay Newman, WIRED, "Jigsaw's Going to Protect Campaigns From Online Attacks," 16 May 2018 Other applications tied to Facebook interfaces could have easily cached Facebook data offline because of their architecture. — Sean Gallagher, Ars Technica, "Facebook “partner” arrangements: Are they as bad as they look?," 19 Dec. 2018 To do this, Google uses a number of proprietary extensions to HTML, and AMP content all gets cached. — Peter Bright, Ars Technica, "Bing starts serving AMP pages as Google prepares to reduce its control," 20 Sep. 2018 The mission will have two focuses: to give us a better perspective on whether Mars has ever hosted life and to cache rocks for a sample return mission. — John Timmer, Ars Technica, "NASA picks a landing spot on Mars for its 2020 rover," 19 Nov. 2018 Typically, massive files can take a while to write to disk due to caching issues, but the 860 Evo was a champ under pressure. — Ian Paul, PCWorld, "How low can our favorite SSD for most people, Samsung's 860 Evo, go? 256GB for $58," 17 Sep. 2018 The forthcoming Mars 2020 rover mission is focused on searching for potentially habitable environments, including caching samples for a possible sample return to Earth. — Elizabeth Howell, Space.com, "New NASA Chief Sees Moon Missions Building a 'Railroad' to Mars," 9 May 2018 But the modifications to cache can be detected, and this can be used to infer the contents of kernel memory. — Peter Bright, Ars Technica, "Intel’s SGX blown wide open by, you guessed it, a speculative execution attack," 14 Aug. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'cache.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.