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.
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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)
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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
-
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:
The hack let the researchers read and suggest changes to OpenAI’s cache of software.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026
Jurors were also informed that Walters’ partial fingerprint was found on the white Spencer’s bag holding the cache of stolen firearms that Oxford turned over to police.
From Slate ● Sep. 17, 2026
Hence her latest caper, which begins with a mission to track down a vintage desk and turns on a dime into a heist tied to a cache of gold.
From Salon ● Aug. 1, 2026
During one e-mail to Epstein released in the files, Siad wrote in badly-spelled English: "In This busyness I feel like fisherman some time I cache quick, some time no fish".
From BBC ● Jul. 22, 2026
But this year, Deydey had already made a trip to the end of the island and raided the cache.
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
For now, the Finnish army has no caches of antipersonnel mines.
From Barron's ● Feb. 6, 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
Israel said it targeted Hezbollah facilities and weapons caches.
From BBC ● Apr. 10, 2025
When a normal bear feeds, it peels back the hide of its prey and takes the innards and hind parts, then caches the rest for later.
From "Wolf Brother" by Michelle Paver
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
He had retrieved the cached ham and watched with pride as Bristle and Runt ate the meat, but he hadn’t touched any of it.
From "Pax" by Sara Pennypacker
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
Perseverance has been drilling and caching rocks that appear to have been laid down at the margin of the lake.
From BBC ● Apr. 15, 2024
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
And Paul Pettitt, an archaeologist at Durham University in England, said it was possible that Homo naledi did not bring the bodies in, either for caching or burying.
From New York Times ● Jun. 5, 2023
It sent me a message about how much I was caching, and asked if I wanted to open it.
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.
