cache
Americannoun
-
caches
plural
-
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.
-
Also called cache storage. Computers. a temporary storage space or memory that allows fast access to data.
Web browser cache;
CPU cache.
-
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)
-
caches,
present (3rd person singular)
-
cached,
past participle, past
-
caching
present participle
noun
-
a hidden store of provisions, weapons, treasure, etc
-
the place where such a store is hidden
-
computing a small high-speed memory that improves computer performance
verb
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
cachesimple
-
cachessimple
-
have cachedperfect
-
has cachedperfect
-
am cachingprogressive
-
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
Looking to grow your vocabulary? Check out this interactive, curated word list from our team of English language specialists at Vocabulary.com – one of over 17,000 lists we've built to help learners worldwide!
"The Odyssey" by Homer, Books 8–13
Interested in learning more words like this one? Our team at Vocabulary.com has got you covered! You can review flashcards, quiz yourself, practice spelling, and more – and it's all completely free to use!
Computer Science and Technology - Middle School
Want to remember this word for good? Start your learning journey today with our library of interactive, themed word lists built by the experts at Vocabulary.com – we'll help you make the most of your study time!
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:
During one e-mail to Epstein released in the files, Siad wrote in badly-spelled English: "In This busyness I feel like fisherman some time I cache quick, some time no fish".
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2026
In 2024, Los Angeles paid $21 million to resolve claims stemming from an incident three years prior where city police blew up a South L.A. neighborhood while detonating a cache of fireworks.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 25, 2026
The same hasn’t happened yet for quad-level cell NAND, however, he said, “reflecting ongoing uncertainty around the ultimate configuration of KV cache offloading.”
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 22, 2026
Pakistan's information chief said the strikes hit four targets, including a training camp, an ammunition cache and a hideout linked to two TTP commanders.
From Barron's ● Jun. 10, 2026
I opened the rat-proof metal box where I kept my food cache and took out some bottled water and a packet of powdered milk.
From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline
These include oil production facilities, arms caches and other military assets, as our Jillian Melchior reported Friday.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 10, 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
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
There were vuvv subscribers, some live, some watching stuff cached, and even some of the kids at school tuned in.
From "Landscape with Invisible Hand" by M.T. Anderson
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
This is an example of a behavior called 'removal and caching'.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 6, 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
This type of thermal storage is just one of several ways of caching warmth in the ground for use later.
From BBC ● Apr. 13, 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.
