Cookie

How to spell cookie

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cookie

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cookie mean?

1. nounA small, flat, sweet baked good, often containing chocolate chips, oats, or nuts.
2. nounA small data file that a website stores on a user's device to remember settings or activity.

Cookie in a sentence

• She baked a tray of cookie dough for the weekend.

• The site asked permission to store a cookie before loading.

• The cafe sells a giant chocolate chip cookie with every coffee.

• Clearing every cookie from the browser logged her out of all accounts.

Where does cookie come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Cookie comes from the Dutch word koekje, the little form of koek, which simply means 'cake'. Dutch settlers in early America carried the word with them, and by the early 1700s it had been reshaped in spelling and sound into the English 'cookie'. It originally described a small, flat sweet baked good, exactly the diminutive sense its Dutch parent implied. In Britain the same item is usually called a biscuit, so the spelling 'cookie' often feels distinctly American even though it is now understood everywhere. In the late twentieth century the word gained a wholly new computing sense, a small file a website stores on a user's device, the name chosen as a playful nod to the small token left behind. The doubled 'o' and the soft '-ie' ending are the spots writers tend to second-guess, but remembering the hidden word 'cook' inside it keeps the spelling steady.

How the word is built

• cook- (from Dutch koek: cake)
• -ie (diminutive suffix)