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.
-
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:
There are very few down at the Brick Community Stadium these days who don't know of Sir Billy, young or old, his name carried a cache right until his last.
From BBC ● Aug. 25, 2026
A forest fire in the south of France has revealed a cache of 400 historic shells and munitions in the village of Le Porge, according to local authorities.
From BBC ● Aug. 4, 2026
Where her previous albums largely drew from a cache of material accumulated across years, Korkejian set out to explore her feelings about her family, their experiences together, and the meaning of home.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 29, 2026
But as with most cults, it is very secretive, and Swaine ran up against a brick wall — until he found a whistleblower who had a cache of documents.
From Salon ● Jun. 25, 2026
As Matthew Stirling and his team were dodging ticks and unearthing stelae in Tres Zapotes, they found a cache of fifteen upside-down pottery bowls tucked into the ground six feet below the surface.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
Certain birds possess impressive individual talents—memorizing where hundreds of caches of food are buried, navigating thousands of miles over oceans—but do any species excel across the board?
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 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 were pictures of soldiers standing around supply caches.
From "The Wednesday Wars" by Gary D. Schmidt
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
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
So far, scientists have sequenced the genomes of 1000 dogs and cached 14,000 tissue samples.
From Science Magazine ● Jan. 7, 2024
I had a few pages cached, from right before the feed stopped.
From "Feed" 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
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
The statement added that an announcement over the future of Australia's caching staff would be made "in due course".
From BBC ● Oct. 30, 2023
“Still, I think the possibility of having funerary caching with this antiquity is already stunning,” she said.
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.
