▪ I. wafer, n.
(ˈweɪfə(r))
Forms: 4–6 wafre, 4–5 waffre, 5–7 waffer, 8 Sc. waffor, weffer, 5 wafier, wafir, wayfire, wafyre, 6 wafyrre, 5–6 wafur, 5–7 waiffur, (5 -er), 6 whafer, 7 wapher, 5– wafer.
[ME. wafre, a. AF. wafre, ONF. waufre (= Central F. gaufre, gofre, whence gofer1), adopted, with change of l into r, from MLG. wâfel (mod.LG. wâfel, wafel) = early mod.Du. waefel, now wafel (WFris. waffel), whence waffle; the mod.G. waffel, Sw. våffla, Da. vaffel are from LG.
As the F. gaufre, wafer, waffle, has also the sense of honeycomb, it is inferred that the Teut. word had originally this meaning, and is cogn. w. OHG. wabo, MHG., mod.G. wabe, honeycomb; but neither Du. nor LG. seems to have preserved this sense.]
1. a. A very light thin crisp cake, baked between wafer-irons; formerly often eaten with wine, now chiefly with ices; in later use sometimes rolled, sometimes serving as the under part of a macaroon. Cf. wafron.
The simile ‘thin as a wafer’, originally belonging to this sense, is now commonly associated with sense 3.
| [1295 Will N. Longespee in Eng. Hist. Rev. (1900) July 524 Tria paria ferrea ad wafras, neulas, et galettas faciendas.] |
| 1377 Langl. P. Pl. B. xiii. 264 [A waferer says:] Alle Londoun I leue liketh wel my wafres. c 1386 Chaucer Miller's T. 193 He sente hire..wafres pipyng hoot out of the gleede. 1442 in Bekynton's Corr. (Rolls) II. 233 Ro. Savage, et Robertus serviens domini Regentis, portaverunt waiffers et poma. c 1460 J. Russell Bk. Nurture in Babees Bk. (1868) 123 For þese may marre many a man changynge his astate, but ȝiff he haue aftur, hard chese, wafurs, with wyne ypocrate. c 1500 For to serve a Lord ibid. 368 Thenne aftur wafers and frute spended, all maner thinge shalbe take uppe and avoyded. 1530 Tindale Exod. xvi. 31 The taste of it [sc. manna] was lyke vnto wafers made with honye [so 1611]. 1546 Wriothesley Chron. (1875) I. 165 My lord major did electe and chose that daie when he was at waffers and ipocras Mr. Richard Jervis. 1572 Huloet (ed. Higins), Wafre, suche as they geue to younge children, crustulum. 1577 Grange Golden Aphrod. etc. P j b, Yea, yea, she treades so nice, she would not wafers breake. 1608 Bonham in Topsell's Serpents 312 The people of India..doe make of these Wormes diuers iuncats, as we doe Tarts, Marchpanes, Wafers, and Cheese-cakes. 1619 Drayton Idea viii, Thy Lips, with age, as any Wafer thinne. a 1625 Fletcher Chances ii. i, A womans oathes are wafers, breake with making. 1671 Grew Anat. Plants i. i. (1682) 2 The inner Coat [of the bean]..so far shrinking up, as to seem only the roughness of the outer, somewhat resembling Wafers under Maquaroons. 1769 Mrs. Raffald Engl. Housekpr. (1778) 277 To make Wafers. Take two spoonfuls of cream, two of sugar, the same of flour, and one spoonful of orange flower water, beat them well together for half an hour, then make your wafer tongs hot,..bake them on a stove fire, as they are baked roll them round a stick like a spiggot, as soon as they are cold, they will be very crisp. 1825 T. Hook Sayings Ser. ii. Passion & Princ. xi. III. 251 The Major having finished the bottle of claret,..together with a large plate of wafers. 1834 E. Copley Housekpr.'s Guide, Wafers.—Sweeten dried flour with loaf sugar;..make it into a stiff batter with cream. There are irons for the purpose of baking them... They are used for the bottom of maccaroons and some other cakes. 1883 R. Haldane Workshop Rec. Ser. ii. 155/2 (Confectionery) Wafers.—Take 4 oz. sugar, 4 oz. butter, 8 oz. flour [etc.]. Ibid. 156/1 Close the tongs immediately; put them on the fire, turning them occasionally until the wafer is done. |
b. ellipt., a sandwich of ice-cream between wafers.
| 1936 N. Coward Still Life in To-night at 8.30 III. i. 48 An old girl..asked if I'd got an ice-cream wafer... What did she think I was, a ‘Stop me and buy one?’ 1979 Listener 6 Sept. 303/2 The vanilla wafer..proved a great healer. |
2. The thin disk of unleavened bread used at the Eucharist in the Western Church before the Reformation, and subsequently in the ritual of Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and some Anglicans.
Cf. obley.
| 1559 Queen Elizabeth Injunct. D 3 b, The vsuall bread and wafer, heretofore named singing Cakes, which serued for the vse of the priuate Masse. 1570 Gilby in Part of a Register (1593) 16 The adoration of the Sacrament, in the Countrey where they knocke and kneele to a Wafer, is a popishe pollicie. 1698 Fryer Acc. E. India & P. 94 The Widow..bestows Holway, a kind of Sacramental Wafer. 1719 Swift Abstr. Hist. Eng., Stephen Wks. 1768 IV. 297 The English, upon a certain engine, raised the mast of a ship, on the top whereof, in a silver box, they put the consecrated wafer. 1853 Robertson Serm. Ser. iii. xix. 249 To tremble before a consecrated wafer is spurious reverence. 1856 Mrs. Browning Aur. Leigh i. 85 As they went To eat the bishop's wafer at the church. 1862 Sat. Rev. 8 Feb. 159 Many of these unbelievers..obtained and outraged consecrated wafers. |
3. a. A small disk of flour mixed with gum and non-poisonous colouring matter, or of gelatine or the like similarly coloured, which when moistened is used for sealing letters, attaching papers, or receiving the impression of a seal.
| [1635: see wafer-seal in 7.] 1712 Addison Spect. No. 305 ¶6 Pen and Ink, Wax and Wafers, with the like Necessaries for Politicians. 1749 Johnson Let. to Miss Porter 12 July, You frighted me with your black wafer, for I was afraid your letter had brought me ill news. 1797 W. Johnston tr. Beckmann's Hist. Invent. I. 226 Mr. Speiss [Ger.] has made an observation..that the oldest seal with a red wafer, he has ever yet found, is on a letter written by D. Krapf, at Spires, in the year 1624, to the government at Bayreuth. 1800 M. Edgeworth Belinda xv, Lady Delacour..began..to put wafers into several notes which she had been writing. 1815 J. Smith Panorama Sci. & Art II. 729 In every kind of tracing, the different papers which are employed upon each other, should be fastened together by wafers. 1848 Thackeray Van. Fair liii, Poor men always use messengers instead of the post. Who has not had their letters, with the wafers wet, and the announcement that a person is waiting in the hall? 1883 S. C. Hall Retrospect I. 15 To put a wafer on a letter was a thing seldom done. |
b. transf. Applied to a round spot.
| 1853 Kane Grinnell Exp. xxviii. (1856) 236 Deck covered in with black felt, the frozen condensation patching it with large white wafers of snow. 1897 Outing XXIX. 543/1 The Dalmatian, or ‘coach dog,’ white with black wafers stuck all over him. |
4. Med. A thin leaf of paste, used to form a cachet for the administration of a powder.
| 1848 C. Brontë in C. Shorter Charlotte Brontë & her Circle (1896) vi. 173 She has taken no medicine, but..Locock's cough wafers, of which she has used about 3 per diem. 1887 Buck's Handbk. Med. Sci. IV. 699/1 Wafers are of two forms. One style consists of two watch-glass shaped bodies, whose edges, upon moistening, will cohere, leaving a central space for enclosure of the powder... The other style consists of a single large, thin, circular sheet of wafer-material. Such sheet dipped into water, becomes flexible, and..is used as a literal wrap for the dose of powder. 1913 G. S. Porter Laddie iv. (1917) 74 She looked exactly as she does when the wafer bursts and the quinine gets in her mouth. |
5. Gunnery. A kind of primer.
| 1867 J. T. Headley Farragut & Nav. Commanders 73 Not a gun went off... The gunners had removed the ‘wafers’ by which they were discharged. |
6. Electronics. A very thin slice of a semiconductor crystal used as the substrate for solid-state circuitry.
| 1956 Bell Syst. Techn. Jrnl. XXXV. 3 After diffusion the entire surface of the silicon wafer is covered with the diffused n- and p-type layers. 1967 Electronics 6 Mar. 25 Litton engineers haven't decided whether to use single or two-layer metalization to interconnect the circuits within the wafers. 1975 D. G. Fink Electronics Engineers' Handbk. viii. 84 After the completion of the test sequence, the probe assembly is automatically lifted up and the probes are indexed over to the next chip to be tested on the wafer. 1979 Maclean's Mag. 2 Apr. 37/3 ‘Wafers’ containing hundreds of memory chips (each with 64,000 transistors): dispensing liquor, guiding spaceships. 1984 QL User Dec. 18 Currently, chips are manufactured in batches on discs of silicon about four inches in diameter called wafers. |
7. attrib. and
Comb., as (sense 1)
wafer-baker,
wafer-maker,
wafer roller;
wafer-like,
wafer-thin adjs.; (sense 3)
wafer box,
wafer-seal; also
wafer-sealed,
wafer-torn adjs.;
wafer-biscuit = sense 1;
wafer-bread, unleavened bread to be used at the Eucharist in the form of wafers;
wafer-cachet (see sense 4);
† wafer-god, an opprobrious term for the consecrated host;
wafer-iron, an apparatus for baking wafers, consisting of two iron blades between which the paste is held (also
pair of wafer-irons);
† wafer pancake, a kind of pancake made thin like a wafer;
† wafer-paper, a preparation of paste in thin sheets, used in cookery and pharmacy (see 4);
wafer stamp, a hand-stamp for impressing a device on wafers;
wafer-tongs = wafer-iron;
† wafer-wall,
nonce-wd., a wall flimsy as a wafer;
† wafer-woman, a woman who sold wafers (
cf. waferer,
wafrestre);
† wafer-work, a kind of ornamental work in which wafers were used to form a pattern. Also
wafer-cake.
| 1580 Hollyband Treas. Fr. Tong, Oublieur, a *wafer baker. |
| 1848 Thackeray Van. Fair xliv, The hulking fellow carrying the *wafer-biscuits. |
| 1837 Dickens Pickw. liv. 591 Wilkins Flasher, Esquire, was..spearing a *wafer-box with a penknife. 1968 Canad. Antiques Collector Nov. 26/1 When envelopes were introduced, the wafer box became a stamp box. |
| 1565 Abp. Parker To Sir W. Cecil 30 Apr., in Corr. (Parker Soc.) 240 These were the orders which they must observe; to wear the cap appointed by Injunction,..to communicate kneeling in *wafer-bread. 1637 Bk. Comm. Prayer Ch. Scot., Commun. rubric, Though it be lawfull to have wafer bread. c 1890 M. Creighton in Life & Lett. (1904) II. 57 The use of wafer bread is undesirable and should be discontinued. |
| 1898 Allbutt's Syst. Med. V. 992 Chloralamide..may be given in doses of 20 to 50 grains in *wafer cachet. |
| 1609 C. Butler Fem. Mon. (1634) 17 Certain Thieves having stolen the Silver Box wherein the *Wafer-Gods use to lie. a 1743 Savage Epist. to Walpole 79 Lo! the priest's hand the wafergod supplies. 1857 Pusey Real Presence iii. (1869) 330 People have profanely spoken of ‘wafer-gods’. They might as well have spoken of ‘fire⁓gods’, of the manifestation of God in the flaming fire in the bush. |
| 1459 Paston Lett. I. 490 Item, ij. payre *wafer irens. 1551 Will T. Fletcher, Glastonb., Oon whafer yron. 1725 Bradley's Family Dict. s.v. Wafer, The Wafer-Iron is to be heated and rubb'd on both sides..with fresh Butter. |
| 1879 M. E. Braddon Vixen III. 302 Coaxing her to eat a *waferlike slice of bread-and-butter. 1906 ‘A. Hope’ Sophy of Kravonia i. v. 56 Of course the mention of the waferlike mark puts her identity beyond question. 1911 J. Ward Roman Era Brit. xii. 220 Wafer-like bone discs..are also of common occurrence. |
| 1530 Palsgr. 286/1 *Wafyrmaker, gaufrier. 1694 Motteux Rabelais v. Pantagr. Prognost. v. 235 Clergy-Taylors, Wafer-makers, Rosary-makers. 1852 Brande Dict. Sci. etc. Suppl., Wafers are coloured with various materials... The wafer makers are very unwilling to show the process. |
| 1769 Mrs. Raffald Engl. Housekpr. (1778) 165 To make *Wafer Pancakes. |
| 1718 M. Eales Receipts 70 Then lay 'em in Lumps on *Wafer-Paper, and set 'em on Papers in an Oven. 1773 G. A. Stevens Trip to Portsmouth ii. 17 That ever any school-fellow of mine should play truant from old port, and good roast beef, to live upon whey, and wafer-paper! 1860 R. Fowler Med. Vocab., Wafer-paper, an article of confectionery, now employed for the exhibition of nauseous electuaries, &c. 1889 R. Wells Bread & Biscuit Baker 46 Cover the tins or wires with wafer paper, and lay out the biscuits. |
| 1814 Gastronomy (1822) 149 The pastry-bakers, cake-makers, and *wafer-rollers. |
| 1635 Patent Office No. 82, Licencing..him and his deputies for the sole makeing of the *wafer seales and he wilbe bound to sell one hundred of them for a penny. |
| 1728 Fielding Love in several Masques iii. iii. 33 'Tis but *Wafer-sealed. I'll open it and read it. |
| 1844 Dickens Mart. Chuz. xxxix, He took up the *wafer-stamp, and began stamping capital F's all over his legs. |
| a 1911 D. G. Phillips Susan Lenox (1917) I. xxi. 371 *Wafer-thin. 1958 Times 15 Nov. 11/6 There is dried meat of the Valais cut in wafer-thin slices. 1976 Times 1 June 1/1 Pitmen in north Derbyshire are understood to have voted by a wafer-thin majority against continuing wage restraint. 1984 B. Francis AA Car Duffer's Guide 63/2 The radiator is made up of a collection of very narrow tubes linked by wafer-thin strips of metal which are exposed to the air-flow. |
| 1763 Ochtertyre House Bk. (S.H.S.) 250, 1 pair *weffer tongs. 1769 [see 1]. 1883 R. Haldane Workshop Rec. Ser. ii. 156/1 Make the wafer-tongs hot over the hole of a stove or clear fire. |
| 1832 Boston Herald 29 May 4/4 The error arose from our letter being *wafer-torn where the figures were written. |
| 1620 Quarles Feast for Worms Introd. B 2 b, Thy *Wafer-walles at dread Iehouahs blast Shall quake. |
| 1607 Beaumont Woman-Hater ii. i, 'Twas no set meeting certainly; for there was no *wafer-woman with her these three days on my knowledge. 1623 Fletcher, etc. Maid in Mill i. iii, Am I not able..to deliver A Letter handsomly! Is that such a hard thing? Why every wafer-woman will undertake it. |
| 1789 C. Smith Ethelinde (1814) II. 169 Miss Ludford's ingenious productions in shell⁓work, in *wafer-work, in filigree and coloured paper. 1817 M. Edgeworth Harrington vi, She sat at some fashionable kind of work—wafer work, I think it was called, a work which has been long since consigned to the mice. |
Sense 7 in
Dict. becomes 8. Add:
7. A very small ingot of gold, weighing no more than a few ounces.
| 1974 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 30 Dec. 6/10 A second worker operates the die that cuts the strip into 1oz. wafers known as planchets. 1984 Amer. Banker 22 Mar. 18/3 According to the charges, the accused stole 500 one-ounce wafers of gold. 1990 Financial Rev. Nov. 578, 10 troy ounces of gold refined to a minimum of 995 parts per 1000 in bar or wafer form. |
[8.] (sense 6)
wafer chip.
| 1981 Japan Econ. Jrnl. 10 Feb. 13 Inspection of the *wafer chip with pincers that could damage the chip surface so far had been unavoidable. |
wafer-scale a.| 1977 Aubusson & Catt in 3rd European Solid State Circuits Conf. 76 It is the purpose of this paper to outline a new approach to the on-slice interconnection of L.S.I. chips to create a *wafer-scale—Integrated (W.S.I.) device. 1985 Practical Computing May 21/4 Sinclair is diversifying again, this time with a new company to produce the revolutionary wafer-scale integration memories. |
▪ II. wafer, v. (
ˈweɪfə(r))
[f. wafer n.] trans. To fasten with a wafer. Also with
on,
up.
| 1748 Richardson Clarissa (1811) V. 243 Wafer'd on, as an after-written introduction to the paragraphs which follow. 1775 F. Burney Early Diary 4 Mar., My father..wafered the paragraph upon a sheet of paper, and sent it to his lodgings. 1822 Bp. Ryder in Mrs. Crane Rec. Life W. H. Havergal (1882) 34, I enclose..a letter which you may read and then wafer or seal. 1835 Dickens Sk. Boz, Private Theatres, Such are the written placards wafered up in the gentlemen's dressing-room. 1848 Thackeray Roundabout Ride Wks. 1898 VI. 588 Cards of lodgings wafered into the rickety bow-windows. 1861 Sala Dutch Pict. xiii. 202 [He] had wafered the page of the book containing his lesson against the doctor's desk. 1874 Spurgeon Treas. David xci. 9, 10, IV. 235 My curiosity led me to read a paper which was wafered up in a shoemaker's window. |