wafer
Americannoun
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wafers
plural
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a thin, crisp cake or biscuit, often sweetened and flavored.
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a thin disk of unleavened bread, used in the Eucharist, as in the Roman Catholic Church.
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a thin disk of dried paste, gelatin, adhesive paper, or the like, used for sealing letters, attaching papers, etc.
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Medicine/Medical. a thin sheet of dry paste or the like, used to enclose a powder to be swallowed.
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any small, thin disk, as a washer or piece of insulation.
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Electronics. a thin slice of semiconductor used as a base material on which single transistors or integrated-circuit components are formed.
verb (used with object)
noun
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a thin crisp sweetened biscuit with different flavourings, served with ice cream, etc
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Christianity a thin disc of unleavened bread used in the Eucharist as celebrated by the Western Church
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pharmacol an envelope of rice paper enclosing a medicament
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electronics a large single crystal of semiconductor material, such as silicon, on which numerous integrated circuits are manufactured and then separated
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a small thin disc of adhesive material used to seal letters, documents, etc
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
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
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:
AI-led demand remains a key growth catalyst, with strong wafer fabrication equipment and automated test equipment demand benefiting equipment and engineering services players, he says.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026
An ultrathin diamond wafer converts CEBAF's electrons into a beam of high-energy photons with parallel spins.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 2, 2026
On the earnings call, Cerebras flagged that it was continuing to work on scaling wafer supply, manufacturing capacity and data-center capacity.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 19, 2026
As a result, CPUs could be as significant as AI accelerators, including both GPUs and ASICs, in terms of wafer revenue contribution in 2027.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 11, 2026
She has been ruining that vanilla wafer this whole time.
From "The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle" by Leslie Connor
A. Hazelwood McMurry from Sacramento, Calif., described it as “akin to the retail version of a pilgrimage to the Vatican,” but with fresh sushi instead of sacramental wafers.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 28, 2026
"Mother remembers," he laughs, selecting the caramel wafers.
From BBC ● Sep. 19, 2026
They adapt the material to a lithography-based manufacturing method suitable for making devices on wafers.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 17, 2026
Investors should look to see whether anyone else pays cash up front to lock in wafers, which would be a measure of how little faith buyers have in the open market.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 7, 2026
There were apricot candies pressed flat into wafers; thin, white, curled strips of coconut candy; several kinds of disclike rice cookies; and so on.
From "Dragonwings" by Laurence Yep
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.
