wafer

American  

[wey-fer] / ˈweɪ fər /

noun

1. a thin, crisp cake or biscuit, often sweetened and flavored.

2. a thin disk of unleavened bread, used in the Eucharist, as in the Roman Catholic Church.

3. a thin disk of dried paste, gelatin, adhesive paper, or the like, used for sealing letters, attaching papers, etc.

4. Medicine/Medical. a thin sheet of dry paste or the like, used to enclose a powder to be swallowed.

5. any small, thin disk, as a washer or piece of insulation.

6. Electronics. a thin slice of semiconductor used as a base material on which single transistors or integrated-circuit components are formed.

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verb (used with object)

1. to seal, close, or attach by means of a wafer or wafers.

   to wafer a letter.

wafer British  

/ ˈweɪfə /

noun

1. a thin crisp sweetened biscuit with different flavourings, served with ice cream, etc

2. Christianity a thin disc of unleavened bread used in the Eucharist as celebrated by the Western Church

3. pharmacol an envelope of rice paper enclosing a medicament

4. electronics a large single crystal of semiconductor material, such as silicon, on which numerous integrated circuits are manufactured and then separated

5. a small thin disc of adhesive material used to seal letters, documents, etc

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verb

1. (tr) to seal, fasten, or attach with a wafer

Other Word Forms

• wafer-like
  adjective
• waferlike
  adjective
• wafery
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of wafer

1350–1400; Middle English wafre < Middle Dutch wafer, variant of wafel waffle ¹

Explanation

A very thin, crispy cookie is called a wafer. Chocolate cream sandwiched with wafers is a delicious treat. In addition to a cookie, wafer can also refer to the thin bread used during the Christian ritual of Holy Communion. These wafers are small and round. The word is used for other thin, disc-shaped objects as well, like an electronic wafer, a circular sliver of material that helps form a circuit. But the most common meaning is still the original "thin cake of paste," from a root that wafer shares with waffle.

Example Sentences

Apple’s chips are produced in batches on a silicon wafer.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 18, 2026

Companies like semiconductor equipment maker Tokyo Electron and silicon wafer giant Shin-Etsu Chemical have kept stock indexes buoyant and powered a 12% jump in exports year over year in the first quarter of 2026.

From Barron's • May 14, 2026

By keeping a chip on one wafer instead of cutting the wafer into multiple chips as is usually done, Cerebras said it can provide faster computing with more power efficiency and lower latency.

From MarketWatch • May 11, 2026

Included in the guidance is an additional $30 million in costs for an extended maintenance shutdown at its solar wafer facility, it said.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 28, 2026

It could expand into a full-size laptop, shrink into a tablet computer, or fold into a wafer of metal smaller than a cell phone.

From "The Mark of Athena" by Rick Riordan

Related Words

• biscuit
• cake
• candy
• cookie
• cracker