biscuit

¹ American  

[bees-kwee] / bisˈkwi /

noun

French.

1. a cookie or cracker.

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biscuit ² American  

[bis-kit] / ˈbɪs kɪt /

noun

1. a kind of bread in small, soft cakes, raised with baking powder or soda, or sometimes with yeast; scone.

2. Chiefly British.

   1. a dry and crisp or hard bread in thin, flat cakes, made without yeast or other raising agent; a cracker.

   2. a cookie.

3. a pale-brown color.

4. Also called bisque.  Ceramics. unglazed earthenware or porcelain after firing.

5. Also called preform.  a piece of plastic or the like, prepared for pressing into a phonograph record.

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adjective

1. having the color biscuit.

biscuit British  

/ ˈbɪskɪt /

noun

1. US and Canadian word: cookie.  a small flat dry sweet or plain cake of many varieties, baked from a dough

2. a kind of small roll similar to a muffin

3. 1. a pale brown or yellowish-grey colour

   2. ( as adjective )

      biscuit gloves

4. Also called: bisque.  earthenware or porcelain that has been fired but not glazed

5. slang to be regarded (by the speaker) as the most surprising thing that could have occurred

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Other Word Forms

• biscuitlike adjective

Etymology

Origin of biscuit

1300–50; Middle English bysquyte < Middle French biscuit ( Medieval Latin biscoctus ), variant of bescuit seamen's bread, literally, twice cooked, equivalent to bes bis ¹ + cuit, past participle of cuire < Latin coquere to cook ¹

Example Sentences

“There’s probably a mountain of boiled eggs in the dining room with our names on them. And biscuits with jam, too.”

From Literature

I briefly consider breakfast-for-dinner — biscuits and eggs are always tempting — but land instead on a skillet chicken pot pie: chicken, frozen vegetables, cream, and biscuits as the topper.

From Salon

The two feasted on chicken fried steak, eggs with corn beef hash, and biscuits and gravy.

From Los Angeles Times

"If you succumb to temptation you basically give in. You eat that biscuit and then you carry on eating."

From BBC

It created the name Biscoff—a combination of biscuit and coffee—when it sought to gain a foothold in the U.S. about 50 years later.

From The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• camel
• cream
• khaki
• off-white
• tan
• taupe