fruitcake

fruitcake

See also: fruit-cake and fruit cake

English

Alternative forms

• fruit-cake, fruit cake

Etymology

From fruit +‎ cake, 1854. Sense of crazy person, 1952 (predated by nutty as a fruitcake, 1914).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈfɹuːt.keɪk/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Noun

fruitcake (countable and uncountable, plural fruitcakes)

1. A cake containing dried fruits and, optionally, nuts, citrus peel and spice.
2. (colloquial, derogatory) A crazy or eccentric person.
   • 1952, Mickey Spillane, Kiss me Deadl, page 7:

     Easy, feller, easy. She's a fruitcake.

   • 1962, Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, New York: Signet, published 1963, page 205:

     One of the loafers kept calling down, "Hey you, Blondie, you like fruitcake kids like that?"

   • 2006 April 4, Ros Taylor, quoting David Cameron, “Cameron refuses to apologise to Ukip”, in The Guardian‎, ISSN 0261-3077:

     "Ukip is sort of a bunch of … fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists mostly," Mr Cameron told LBC radio.

3. (US, slang, colloquial, derogatory, dated) A homosexual male.

Translations

cake

Chinese: Cantonese: 乾果蛋糕, 干果蛋糕 (gon1 gwo2 daan6 gou1) Mandarin: 乾果蛋糕／干果蛋糕 (gānguǒ dàngāo) Dutch: fruitcake m Esperanto: fruktokuko Finnish: hedelmäkakku (fi) French: cake (fr) m German: Früchtebrot (de) n, Früchtekuchen m Greek: Ancient: παλάθη f (paláthē) Irish: císte torthaí m Japanese: フルーツケーキ (furūtsukēki) Maori: keke huarākau Russian: кекс (ru) m (keks), фрукто́вый пиро́г m (fruktóvyj piróg) Swedish: fruktkaka c Turkish: meyveli kek

crazy person

Finnish: kaheli (fi), kahjo (fi) Russian: псих (ru) m (psix) Swedish: toka (sv), tok (sv), galning (sv), knäppgök (sv)

homosexual

Finnish: hintti (fi) Portuguese: bicha (pt) m or f, boiola (pt) m, puto (pt) m, viado (pt) m Russian: го́мик (ru) m (gómik) (colloquial), пе́дик (ru) m (pédik) (offensive), пидора́с (ru) m (pidorás) (offensive), пи́дор (ru) m (pídor) (offensive) Swedish: bög (sv) c

Further reading

• Jonathon Green (2023), “fruitcake n.¹”, in Green's Dictionary of Slang

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Dutch

Etymology

Compound of fruit (“fruit”) +‎ cake (“cake”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈfrœy̯t.keːk/
• Hyphenation: fruit‧cake

Noun

fruitcake m (plural fruitcakes, diminutive fruitcakeje n)

1. A fruitcake, cake flavored with fruit.

Hypernyms

• fruittaart