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.
-
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
-
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:
Independent security researchers had used Anthropic’s Claude software to gain access to an OpenAI employee’s ChatGPT account, giving them a way to read and suggest changes to the company’s private 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
Dobrindt said that last October Germany's domestic intelligence agency became aware of a possible weapons cache in the woods on the outskirts of Berlin.
From BBC ● Aug. 21, 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
To the best of Shackleton’s knowledge, there was a cache of stores in a hut on Paulet Island from a 1902 Swedish expedition.
From "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" by Jennifer Armstrong
The Lebanese army went to work clearing Hezbollah positions and weapons caches in the south in an effort the U.S. and even Israel acknowledged was having an effect.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 9, 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
In June, the army-aligned government based in Port Sudan claimed to have found weapons and ammunition labelled "Made in Kenya" in RSF caches in Khartoum.
From Barron's ● Oct. 30, 2025
“But I can tell you that there are no ammunition dumps or weapons caches in Baalbek.”
From BBC ● Oct. 30, 2024
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
These excursions hunted for evidence of Sir Franklin, and cached food, tents, and other supplies for future trips in the spring.
From "American Spirits" by Barb Rosenstock
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
The purpose of caching is to achieve a low miss ratio -- the fraction of requested objects that must be fetched from "the warehouse."
From Science Daily ● Jan. 24, 2024
Dr. Martinón-Torres considered funerary caching more likely than burials, pointing out that the oval depressions did not contain full skeletons in complete alignment.
From New York Times ● Jun. 5, 2023
This type of thermal storage is just one of several ways of caching warmth in the ground for use later.
From BBC ● Apr. 13, 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
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