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

While a single 300 millimeter silicon wafer normally produces a few dozen chips, Cerebras uses the entire wafer for one chip, about the size of a dinner plate.

From Barron's • May 15, 2026

Cerebras is focused on supporting inference workloads, and unlike Nvidia and other AI-chip makers, its approach to chip-making involves using an entire wafer as one chip.

From MarketWatch • May 11, 2026

"This shift is significantly increasing the need for Intel's CPUs and wafer and advanced packaging offerings."

From Barron's • Apr. 23, 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