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.
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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
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is cachingprogressive
-
have been cachingperfect progressive
-
has been cachingperfect progressive
Past
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cachedsimple
-
had cachedperfect
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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:
And in 2009, a huge cache of ice age fossils was found in L.A.’s Miracle Mile under the parking lot of a former May Co.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 24, 2026
Independent security researchers had used Anthropic’s Claude software to gain access to an OpenAI employee’s ChatGPT account, giving them a way to read and suggest changes to the company’s private cache of software.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 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
The card, discovered by Ellie Mead in Bicester, Oxfordshire, revealed the cache was left there in 1971 by electrician David Judd, who promised "one pint best beer if penny returned".
From BBC ● Aug. 19, 2026
The floor lay flat against the hull; there could be no cache beneath it.
From "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel
Protocols formed around who had access to what hills, and skilled mushroom hunters developed techniques around how to find—and ensure rivals couldn’t find—the best matsutake caches.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 12, 2026
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
In June, the army-aligned government based in Port Sudan claimed to have found weapons and ammunition labelled "Made in Kenya" in RSF caches in Khartoum.
From Barron's ● Oct. 30, 2025
“But I can tell you that there are no ammunition dumps or weapons caches in Baalbek.”
From BBC ● Oct. 30, 2024
There he smelled caches of game buried in the soft earth, but they were marked with powerful warning scents, so he did not dig them up.
From "Pax" by Sara Pennypacker
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
Meanwhile, the cached material sits in tubes on Mars.
From Salon ● Mar. 29, 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
These excursions hunted for evidence of Sir Franklin, and cached food, tents, and other supplies for future trips in the spring.
From "American Spirits" by Barb Rosenstock
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
Perseverance has been drilling and caching rocks that appear to have been laid down at the margin of the lake.
From BBC ● Apr. 15, 2024
The purpose of caching is to achieve a low miss ratio -- the fraction of requested objects that must be fetched from "the warehouse."
From Science Daily ● Jan. 24, 2024
UW WR Jalen McMillan is caching passes in early warm ups.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 11, 2023
It sent me a message about how much I was caching, and asked if I wanted to open it.
From "Feed" by M.T. Anderson
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.
