Word of the Day

: September 29, 2006

madeleine

noun MAD-uh-lun

What It Means

1 : a small rich shell-shaped cake

2 : one that evokes a memory

madeleine in Context

The crack of the bat and the sight of his son running the bases were madeleines for Tom, calling up memories of the great times he had playing the game in his youth.

Did You Know?

The madeleine is said to have been named after a 19th-century French cook named Madeleine Paumier, but it was the French author Marcel Proust who immortalized the pastry in his 1913 book Swann's Way, the first volume of his seven-part novel Remembrance of Things Past. In that work, a taste of tea-soaked cake evokes a surge of memory and nostalgia. As more and more readers chewed on the profound mnemonic power attributed to a mere morsel of cake, the word "madeleine" itself became a designation for anything that evokes a memory.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.