biscuit

UK: /ˈbɪskɪt/ US: /ˈbɪskɪt/ ,(bis′kit; Fr.bēs kwē′)

WordReference Random House Learner's Dictionary of American English © 2025

bis•cuit /ˈbɪskɪt/   n. [countable]

1. Food a small, soft, raised bread, leavened with baking soda:
   biscuits and gravy for dinner.
2. Food, British Terms Chiefly Brit.
   • a crisp flat bread made without leavening;
     cracker:
     a plain biscuit to calm your stomach.
   • a cookie:
     biscuits and tea.

WordReference Random House Unabridged Dictionary of American English © 2025

bis•cuit  (bis′kit), n. 

1. Food a kind of bread in small, soft cakes, raised with baking powder or soda, or sometimes with yeast.
2. Food, British Terms [Chiefly Brit.]
   • a dry and crisp or hard bread in thin, flat cakes, made without yeast or other raising agent;
     a cracker.
   • a cookie.
3. a pale-brown color.
4. Ceramics Also called bisque. unglazed earthenware or porcelain after firing.
5. Also called preform. a piece of plastic or the like, prepared for pressing into a phonograph record.

adj. 

6. having the color biscuit.

• Latin coquere to cook¹
• Middle French biscuit (Medieval Latin biscoctus), variant of bescuit seamen's bread, literally, twice cooked, equivalent. to bes bis¹ + cuit, past participle of cuire
• Middle English bysquyte 1300–50

bis′cuit•like′, adj. 

bis•cuit  (bēs kwē′), n. [French.]

1. Food a cookie or cracker.

Collins Concise English Dictionary © HarperCollins Publishers::

biscuit / ˈbɪskɪt/ noun

1. a small flat dry sweet or plain cake of many varieties, baked from a dough
   US and Canadian word: cookie
2. a pale brown or yellowish-grey colour
3. Also called: bisque earthenware or porcelain that has been fired but not glazed
4. take the biscuit ⇒ to be regarded (by the speaker) as the most surprising thing that could have occurred

Etymology: 14th Century: from Old French, from (pain) bescuit twice-cooked (bread), from bes bis + cuire to cook, from Latin coquere