cache
Americannoun
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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)
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
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have been cachingperfect progressive
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has been cachingperfect progressive
Past
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cachedsimple
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had cachedperfect
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was cachingprogressive
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were cachingprogressive
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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:
One trend to monitor is something known as key-value 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
When Donald Trump was 13, his father caught him with a hidden cache of switchblades.
From Salon ● May 31, 2026
But a search of court documents has revealed that a large cache of emails relating to Mountbatten-Windsor's finances had already been sent to Palace officials, years before the current inquiries began.
From BBC ● May 30, 2026
Within the cache, Mama first placed several packs of dried, smoked fish and venison, all tied carefully together in two layers of bark.
From "The Birchbark House" by Louise Erdrich
And many are dipping into caches of credit-card rewards.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 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
Tribes wield significant influence and often operate under their own moral and judicial codes, and they possess huge caches of arms.
From Barron's ● Nov. 15, 2025
Israel said it targeted Hezbollah facilities and weapons caches.
From BBC ● Apr. 10, 2025
He hid caches of food under the sawdust, not to eat later, but to attract bugs.
From "The House of the Scorpion" by Nancy Farmer
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
While caching can be thought of as a well-organized closet for a computer, it is difficult to know what should go into that closet when millions of people, with constantly changing needs, are using it.
From Science Daily ● Jan. 24, 2024
UW WR Jalen McMillan is caching passes in early warm ups.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 11, 2023
Dr. Martinón-Torres considered funerary caching more likely than burials, pointing out that the oval depressions did not contain full skeletons in complete alignment.
From New York Times ● Jun. 5, 2023
That night I could feel another message caching.
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.
