cache
Americannoun
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caches
plural
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a hiding place, especially one in the ground, for ammunition, food, treasures, etc..
She hid her jewelry in a little cache in the cellar.
-
anything so hidden.
The enemy never found our cache of food.
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Also called cache storage. Computers. a temporary storage space or memory that allows fast access to data.
Web browser cache;
CPU cache.
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Alaska and Northern Canada. a small shed elevated on poles above the reach of animals and used for storing food, equipment, etc.
verb (used with object)
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caches,
present (3rd person singular)
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cached,
past participle, past
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caching
present participle
noun
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a hidden store of provisions, weapons, treasure, etc
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the place where such a store is hidden
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computing a small high-speed memory that improves computer performance
verb
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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cachesimple
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cachessimple
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have cachedperfect
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has cachedperfect
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am cachingprogressive
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are cachingprogressive
-
is cachingprogressive
-
have been cachingperfect progressive
-
has been cachingperfect progressive
Past
-
cachedsimple
-
had cachedperfect
-
was cachingprogressive
-
were cachingprogressive
-
had been cachingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of cache
First recorded in 1585–95; from French, noun derivative of cacher “to hide,” from unattested Vulgar Latin coācticāre “to stow away,” originally, “to pack together,” frequentative of Latin coāctāre, equivalent to Latin coāct(us) “collected” (past participle of cōgere “to collect, compel”) + -icā- formative verb suffix + -re infinitive ending
Explanation
Cache sounds like what it is, a stash, and sometimes people — usually the criminal type — have a cache of stolen cash. Often the phrase "weapons cache" is used of a bunch of hidden guns or weapons that have been hidden or stored away, which is logical, given that the French verb cacher means "to hide." Sometimes things aren’t really hidden but are stored away out of sight for use later. Computers even cache data and directories to retrieve when needed. So a cache is anything from a stash of cash to a store of information on reserve.
Vocabulary lists containing cache
Gimme, Gimme, Gimme
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"The Odyssey" by Homer, Books 8–13
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Computer Science and Technology - Middle School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Several posts, which were retrieved through Google image cache, appeared on his now-deleted Instagram account the day of this week’s attack.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 3, 2026
Jurors were also informed that Walters’ partial fingerprint was found on the white Spencer’s bag holding the cache of stolen firearms that Oxford turned over to police.
From Slate ● Sep. 17, 2026
There are very few down at the Brick Community Stadium these days who don't know of Sir Billy, young or old, his name carried a cache right until his last.
From BBC ● Aug. 25, 2026
Hence her latest caper, which begins with a mission to track down a vintage desk and turns on a dime into a heist tied to a cache of gold.
From Salon ● Aug. 1, 2026
Somebody had found a cache of coffee beans about two months earlier, and they had sent to Saigon for a coffee grinder.
From "Fallen Angels" by Walter Dean Myers
And many are dipping into caches of credit-card rewards.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026
For now, actions on the ground, such as dismantling weapons caches and tunnel networks, must be documented, he said.
From Barron's ● Dec. 18, 2025
ProPublica also interviewed more than 100 government and aid officials and reviewed enormous caches of previously unreported memos, correspondence and other documents from inside the Trump administration.
From Salon ● Dec. 16, 2025
Instead, they may simply be what he calls “rocks,” caches of amino acids that a cell can mine in times of need.
From Science Magazine ● Jun. 6, 2024
“I take it you already possess great caches of treasure. It surprises me that such a meager financial offering as I could supply would entice you to trade.”
From "Fablehaven" by Brandon Mull
A JetBlue spokesperson apologized for the error in an email to MarketWatch and said its fares “are not determined by cached data or other personal information.”
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 20, 2026
Taylor notes that the common ancestor of all North American chickadees cached food.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 17, 2024
By observing timestamps of the material and searching for previous versions cached online, we know these videos only appeared online recently.
From BBC ● Feb. 15, 2024
So far, scientists have sequenced the genomes of 1000 dogs and cached 14,000 tissue samples.
From Science Magazine ● Jan. 7, 2024
I finally took it out of my tree and cached it under a rock ledge nearby.
From "My Side of the Mountain" by Jean Craighead George
This allows for caching or storing more information in dedicated memory, which makes the agents faster and cheaper because they don’t have to reprocess the same data for every single interaction, according to Salazar.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 5, 2026
And yet, caching is relatively understudied in the computer science field.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 24, 2024
The statement added that an announcement over the future of Australia's caching staff would be made "in due course".
From BBC ● Oct. 30, 2023
And Paul Pettitt, an archaeologist at Durham University in England, said it was possible that Homo naledi did not bring the bodies in, either for caching or burying.
From New York Times ● Jun. 5, 2023
That night I could feel another message caching.
From "Feed" by M.T. Anderson
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