Biscuit

How to spell biscuit

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce biscuit

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does biscuit mean?

1. nounA small, flat, crisp baked treat, typically sweet, eaten as a snack (the British and Canadian sense).
2. nounA small, soft, leavened bread roll served warm, often with gravy or butter (the American sense).

Biscuit in a sentence

• She dunked a chocolate biscuit into her tea.

• The diner served fried chicken with a fluffy biscuit on the side.

• The tin held one stale biscuit and nothing else.

• She split a warm biscuit and spread it with butter and honey.

Where does biscuit come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin phrase panis biscoctus, meaning 'twice-cooked bread', built from bis 'twice' and coctus 'cooked', the past participle of coquere 'to cook'. The idea was practical: bread baked a second time dried out and kept for long voyages and military campaigns without spoiling. English took the word through the Old French bescuit during the medieval period, and the spelling drifted over the centuries before settling on the French-looking 'biscuit'. That frozen French ending is exactly the trap, since the '-cuit' is pronounced simply as 'kit' and gives no hint of the silent, illogical spelling. The same coquere root that gives us 'twice-cooked' also survives in everyday words like 'cook' and 'concoct'.

How the word is built

• bis- (from Latin bis: twice)
• cuit (from Latin coctus: cooked)