bake
Americanverb (used with object)
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bakes,
present (3rd person singular)
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baked,
past participle, past
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baking
present participle
-
to cook by dry heat in an oven or on heated metal or stones.
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to harden by heat.
to bake pottery in a kiln.
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to dry by, or subject to heat.
The sun baked the land.
verb (used without object)
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bakes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
baked,
past participle, past
-
baking
present participle
-
to bake bread, a casserole, etc.
-
to become baked.
The cake will bake in about half an hour.
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to be subjected to heat.
The lizard baked on the hot rocks.
verb phrase
verb
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(tr) to cook by dry heat in or as if in an oven
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(intr) to cook bread, pastry, etc, in an oven
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to make or become hardened by heat
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informal (intr) to be extremely hot, as in the heat of the sun
noun
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a party at which the main dish is baked
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a batch of things baked at one time
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a kind of biscuit
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a small flat fried cake
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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overbakeverb
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prebakeverb
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outbakeverb (used with object)
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rebakeverb (used with object)
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underbakeverb (used with object)
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unbakedadjective
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well-bakedadjective
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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bakesimple
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bakessimple
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have bakedperfect
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has bakedperfect
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am bakingprogressive
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are bakingprogressive
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is bakingprogressive
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have been bakingperfect progressive
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has been bakingperfect progressive
Past
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bakedsimple
-
had bakedperfect
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was bakingprogressive
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were bakingprogressive
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had been bakingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of bake
First recorded before 1000; Middle English baken, Old English bacan; cognate with Old High German bahhan, Old Norse baka; akin to Dutch bakken, German backen, Greek phṓgein “to roast”; from Proto-Indo-European extended root bhēg-, bhōg- “to warm, roast”
Explanation
To bake something is to cook it in a hot oven. When you bake a batch of blueberry muffins, your whole house smells delicious. Whether you bake some cookies for dessert, a casserole to take to a potluck supper, or bake a clay pot in a kiln, you cook with a relatively slow, dry heat. You can also use the word bake figuratively: "Are you going to move into the shade, or are you just going to bake in the sun all day?" The Old English word was bacan, from a Germanic root.
Vocabulary lists containing bake
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:
On week two, viewers watched him bake a biscuit mosaic.
From BBC ● Oct. 7, 2026
The rest is mostly an exercise in giving the original chicken bake slightly better accessories.
From Salon ● Sep. 8, 2026
She believes "the first bite of a bake is always with the eyes"
From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2026
Add a sharply dressed green salad, maybe something cold and fizzy to drink, and suddenly the food-court chicken bake has become a centerpiece.
From Salon ● Sep. 8, 2026
Rows of houses bake in the sun, their occupants nowhere to be seen—pretty much how we left it.
From "Dry" by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman
Working in a busy NICU, he loves how a cake can bring joy to the ward and has won over the nurses with his bakes.
From BBC ● Sep. 8, 2026
As Europe bakes under a second heatwave in as many months, Guterres delivered a speech in London that painted a stark picture of a planet that has just endured its 11 hottest years on record.
From Barron's ● Jun. 23, 2026
Analysts at KeyBanc suggested Monday that SpaceX’s stock price already bakes in sufficient optimism for the company’s ambitions.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 22, 2026
WSJ | Buy Side: This unique multicooker air fries, bakes, slow cooks and more.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 6, 2026
My grandma is very old, and she doesn’t remember things a lot, but she bakes the most delicious cookies.
From "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" by Stephen Chbosky
The blistering heat that has baked Southern California for days is coming to an end, with rain on tap for the weekend and early next week, along with a risk of potentially damaging coastal flooding.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 10, 2026
The code of silence baked into the Greek life brotherhood was broken after his dramatic arrest.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 28, 2026
A Turkish city cooked up largest-ever pot of baked beans, but no giant hot dog to go with it.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 23, 2026
But they are also excellent spooned onto little buns, topped with cheese and baked into mushroom sliders.
From Salon ● Sep. 14, 2026
In this baked, desolate, treeless landscape, scattered with small tin-roofed huts and dusty walking paths, we drove through a gate and onto smooth pavement.
From "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder and Michael French
That’s when Harvard, the school that helped give the world baking soda and the forward pass, cooked up its greatest piece of ingenuity yet.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2026
The description for the fundraiser remembered Rodriguez for his “easygoing warmth,” his affinity for race cars, baking and “a good cup of coffee.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 3, 2026
"I can't imagine my own son not having a birthday cake. When I'm baking them, he says to me, 'Why don't they?' He can't, as a child, see why," she said.
From BBC ● Sep. 30, 2026
The whole thing went into a greased 8-inch baking dish and into the refrigerator overnight.
From Salon ● Sep. 22, 2026
As soon as I was decent, she led me past the dirty linen and out into the baking sun.
From "The Light in Hidden Places" by Sharon Cameron
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.
