cache

American  

[kash] / kæʃ /

noun

• caches
  plural

1. a hiding place, especially one in the ground, for ammunition, food, treasures, etc..

   She hid her jewelry in a little cache in the cellar.

2. anything so hidden.

   The enemy never found our cache of food.

   Synonyms:

   store, reserve, stockpile, hoard

3. Also called cache storage.  Computers. a temporary storage space or memory that allows fast access to data.

   Web browser cache;

   CPU cache.

4. Alaska and Northern Canada. a small shed elevated on poles above the reach of animals and used for storing food, equipment, etc.

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verb (used with object)

• caches,
  present (3rd person singular)
• cached,
  past participle,  past
• caching
  present participle

1. to put in a cache; conceal; hide.

   Synonyms:

   secrete

cache British  

/ kæʃ /

noun

1. a hidden store of provisions, weapons, treasure, etc

2. the place where such a store is hidden

3. computing a small high-speed memory that improves computer performance

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verb

1. (tr) to store in a cache

cache Scientific  

/ kăsh /

1. An area of computer memory devoted to the high-speed retrieval of frequently used or requested data.

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Other Word Forms

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• caches
  plural

Participles

• caching
  present
• cached
  past

Conjugated Forms

Present

• cache
  simple
• caches
  simple
• have cached
  perfect
• has cached
  perfect
• am caching
  progressive
• are caching
  progressive
• is caching
  progressive
• have been caching
  perfect progressive
• has been caching
  perfect progressive

Past

• cached
  simple
• had cached
  perfect
• was caching
  progressive
• were caching
  progressive
• had been caching
  perfect progressive

Future

• will cache
  simple
• will have cached
  perfect
• will be caching
  progressive
• will have been caching
  perfect progressive

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.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

cache caches cached caching

She was deeply involved in the 2016 Panama Papers investigation - a cache of confidential documents leaked from a Panamanian law firm.

From BBC ● Sep. 2, 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

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

In 2024, Los Angeles paid $21 million to resolve claims stemming from an incident three years prior where city police blew up a South L.A. neighborhood while detonating a cache of fireworks.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 25, 2026

When we got there, an examination of the oxygen cache immediately revealed that there were at least six full bottles.

From "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer

These include oil production facilities, arms caches and other military assets, as our Jillian Melchior reported Friday.

From The Wall Street Journal ● May 10, 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

Tribes wield significant influence and often operate under their own moral and judicial codes, and they possess huge caches of arms.

From Barron's ● Nov. 15, 2025

Israel said it targeted Hezbollah facilities and weapons caches.

From BBC ● Apr. 10, 2025

He hid caches of food under the sawdust, not to eat later, but to attract bugs.

From "The House of the Scorpion" by Nancy Farmer

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

Meanwhile, the cached material sits in tubes on Mars.

From Salon ● Mar. 29, 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

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

And yet, caching is relatively understudied in the computer science field.

From Science Daily ● Jan. 24, 2024

UW WR Jalen McMillan is caching passes in early warm ups.

From Seattle Times ● Nov. 11, 2023

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

That night I could feel another message caching.

From "Feed" by M.T. Anderson

Related Words

• hideout
• hoard
• nest egg
• repository
• stash
• stockpile
• storehouse
• treasure
• wealth