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madeleine.

A French type of small gateau or sponge cake, often shaped like an elongated scallop shell.

9 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈmad(ə)lɪn/Received-Pronunciation/ˈmad(ə)lɛn/Received-Pronunciation/ˈmædələn/General-American/ˌmædəˈleɪn/General-American
  1. A French type of small gateau or sponge cake, often shaped like an elongated scallop shell.

  2. Something which brings back a memory; a source of nostalgia or evocative memories.

    figuratively
Where this word comes from

Unadapted borrowing from French madeleine, from earlier gâteau à la Madeleine, after the given name Madeleine (“Magdalene”), of uncertain reference: attributed in some sources to a 19th-century pastry cook Madeleine Paulmier, whose existence is now considered dubious. In sense 2, used with reference to the cake's function in the extract below, taken from Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.