wafer
Americannoun
-
a thin, crisp cake or biscuit, often sweetened and flavored.
-
a thin disk of unleavened bread, used in the Eucharist, as in the Roman Catholic Church.
-
a thin disk of dried paste, gelatin, adhesive paper, or the like, used for sealing letters, attaching papers, etc.
-
Medicine/Medical. a thin sheet of dry paste or the like, used to enclose a powder to be swallowed.
-
any small, thin disk, as a washer or piece of insulation.
-
Electronics. a thin slice of semiconductor used as a base material on which single transistors or integrated-circuit components are formed.
verb (used with object)
noun
-
a thin crisp sweetened biscuit with different flavourings, served with ice cream, etc
-
Christianity a thin disc of unleavened bread used in the Eucharist as celebrated by the Western Church
-
pharmacol an envelope of rice paper enclosing a medicament
-
electronics a large single crystal of semiconductor material, such as silicon, on which numerous integrated circuits are manufactured and then separated
-
a small thin disc of adhesive material used to seal letters, documents, etc
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of wafer
1350–1400; Middle English wafre < Middle Dutch wafer, variant of wafel waffle 1
Explanation
A very thin, crispy cookie is called a wafer. Chocolate cream sandwiched with wafers is a delicious treat. In addition to a cookie, wafer can also refer to the thin bread used during the Christian ritual of Holy Communion. These wafers are small and round. The word is used for other thin, disc-shaped objects as well, like an electronic wafer, a circular sliver of material that helps form a circuit. But the most common meaning is still the original "thin cake of paste," from a root that wafer shares with waffle.
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.
Cerebras is playing in a crowded field of chips that run AI models, but the company’s Wafer Scale Engine 3 is unique.
From Barron's • May 11, 2026
Three years ago, Britain blocked the company from buying its main semiconductor manufacturer, Newport Wafer Fab, following a "detailed national security assessment".
From Barron's • Nov. 19, 2025
Graham crackers, Biscoff, Nilla Wafer — anything that can be blitzed into buttery crumbs will do.
From Salon • Oct. 23, 2025
Cash allegedly provided Berry information on a national-security probe into a Chinese-controlled company’s purchase of a British computer-chip factory Newport Wafer Fab before it was officially made public.
From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 16, 2025
Before I began to restore these women to their dead selves through my awful work, I laid in Dracula’s tomb some of the Wafer, and so banished him from it, Un-Dead, for ever.
From "Dracula" by Bram Stoker
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
