WAFER

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does wafer mean? 

• WAFER (noun)
  The noun WAFER has 3 senses:

1. a small adhesive disk of paste; used to seal letters

2. a small thin crisp cake or cookie

3. thin disk of unleavened bread used in a religious service (especially in the celebration of the Eucharist)

  Familiarity information: WAFER used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WAFER (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A small adhesive disk of paste; used to seal letters

Classified under:

Nouns denoting substances

Hypernyms ("wafer" is a kind of...):

library paste; paste (an adhesive made from water and flour or starch; used on paper and paperboard)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A small thin crisp cake or cookie

Classified under:

Nouns denoting foods and drinks

Hypernyms ("wafer" is a kind of...):

biscuit; cookie; cooky (any of various small flat sweet cakes ('biscuit' is the British term))

Sense 3

Meaning:

Thin disk of unleavened bread used in a religious service (especially in the celebration of the Eucharist)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting foods and drinks

Hypernyms ("wafer" is a kind of...):

bread; breadstuff; staff of life (food made from dough of flour or meal and usually raised with yeast or baking powder and then baked)

 Context examples 

A sustained release (SR) implant wafer containing the lipophilic nitrosourea carmustine (BCNU) with antineoplastic activity.

(Carmustine Sustained-Release Implant Wafer, NCI Thesaurus)

The shell consists of two concave pieces of wafer made of flour and water.

(Cachet Dosage Form, NCI Thesaurus)

But near the instep there is a small circular wafer of paper with the shopman’s hieroglyphics upon it.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A biodegradable wafer that is used to deliver the anticancer drug carmustine directly into a brain tumor site after the tumor has been removed by surgery.

(Gliadel Wafer, NCI Dictionary)

He crumbled the wafer up fine and worked it into the mass between his hands.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

The silicon material needs to have a highly ordered wafer structure and is very sensitive to any impurities, such as dust, so has to be made in a cleanroom.

(‘Messy’ production of perovskite material increases solar cell efficiency, University of Cambridge)

As the wafer digested, the tincture mounted to his brain, bearing the proposition along with it.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

The idea of those Devonshire girls, among the dry law-stationers and the attorneys' offices; and of the tea and toast, and children's songs, in that grim atmosphere of pounce and parchment, red-tape, dusty wafers, ink-jars, brief and draft paper, law reports, writs, declarations, and bills of costs; seemed almost as pleasantly fanciful as if I had dreamed that the Sultan's famous family had been admitted on the roll of attorneys, and had brought the talking bird, the singing tree, and the golden water into Gray's Inn Hall.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The proposition, and demonstration, were fairly written on a thin wafer, with ink composed of a cephalic tincture.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Then, with the fear on me of what might be, I drew a ring so big for her comfort, round where Madam Mina sat; and over the ring I passed some of the wafer, and I broke it fine so that all was well guarded.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)