noun
- a hiding place, especially one in the ground, for ammunition, food, treasures, etc.: She hid her jewelry in a little cache in the cellar.
- anything so hidden: The enemy never found our cache of food.
- Computers. a temporary storage space or memory that allows fast access to data: Web browser cache; CPU cache.
- Alaska and Northern Canada. a small shed elevated on poles above the reach of animals and used for storing food, equipment, etc.
verb (used with object), cached, cach·ing.
- to put in a cache; conceal; hide.
noun
- a hidden store of provisions, weapons, treasure, etc
- the place where such a store is hidden
- computing a small high-speed memory that improves computer performance
verb
- (tr) to store in a cache
1797, “hiding place,” from French Canadian trappers’ slang, “hiding place for stores” (1660s), a back-formation from French cacher “to hide, conceal” (13c., Old French cachier), from Vulgar Latin *coacticare “store up, collect, compress,” frequentative of Latin coactare “constrain,” from coactus, past participle of cogere “to collect” (see cogent). Sense extended by 1830s to “anything stored in a hiding place.”
- An area of computer memory devoted to the high-speed retrieval of frequently used or requested data.