Meaning & use
a hotcake
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Meanings
nouncountableold-fashioned
A flat, round cake made from a thin batter and cooked quickly on a hot pan, eaten especially for breakfast.
Grammar: Countable, so you can say a hotcake or two hotcakes; in the US, pancake is far more common.
Patterns
- a stack of hotcakes
- make hotcakes for breakfast
Grandma cooked hotcakes on the griddle while we set the table.
He ordered a plate of hotcakes with butter and maple syrup.
phraseidiominformalfigurative
Used in the phrase "sell like hotcakes", meaning to be bought very quickly and in large amounts.
Grammar: Fixed phrase: the subject is usually a product or tickets, and the verb is almost always sell.
Patterns
- something sells like hotcakes
- something sold like hotcakes
The new phone sold like hotcakes in its first week.
Tickets for the concert sold like hotcakes, so book early.
Word forms
| plural | hotcakes |
|---|
Common combinations
- sell like hotcakes
- Her handmade candles sold like hotcakes at the fair.
- a stack of hotcakes
- He finished a whole stack of hotcakes before school.
- hot off the griddle
- The hotcakes were still hot off the griddle when we sat down.
- hotcakes and syrup
- The diner is famous for its hotcakes and syrup.
Synonyms and how they differ
- pancake
- This is the normal everyday word in both British and American English; use it instead of hotcake in most situations.
- flapjack
- In American English this means a thick pancake, but in British English it means a chewy oat bar, so it can confuse people.
- griddle cake
- A close synonym, but it sounds old-fashioned and appears mostly in older recipes or stories.
Word family
- hotcake noun
- The singular form; used mainly in the fixed phrase about selling quickly.
Commonly confused: a hotcake or cupcake? a hotcake or shortcake?
a hotcake vs cupcake
A cupcake is a small sweet cake baked in a paper case, not a flat cake cooked on a pan.
a hotcake vs shortcake
Shortcake is a sweet dessert cake made with butter or cream, often served with fruit; it is not a breakfast pancake.
Practice
Which sentence uses the phrase correctly?
Choose one answer.
The fixed phrase is "sell like hotcakes", with no article and the plural form. "Sold like a hotcake" breaks the fixed wording, and "sold as hotcakes" or "sold hotcakes" changes the meaning to actually selling cakes.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “a hotcake”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.