cupcake v. to compete or win with little effort. Editorial Note: Usually transitive, especially in the form cupcake it. Thanks and credit go to Ben Zimmer for his research. Etymological Note: Ben Zimmer has suggested comparisons with other dessert-related terms, such as cakewalk, piece of cake, and pudding ‘an easy task,’ and easy as pie ‘very easy.’ However, there is also a noun cupcake ‘a homosexual man; an effeminate or ineffectual man,’ from an earlier (affectionate) term for a girl or woman, that could be related to the verb defined here. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A Winter Dictionary (Bookshop|Amazon) by Paul Anthony Jones includes some words to lift your spirits. The verb whicken involves the lengthening of days in springtime, a variant of quicken, meaning “come to life.” Another word, breard, is...
Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital is a sensuous, exhilarating meditation about the strangeness of life on a space station, with its mix of tedious tasks and jaw-dropping views. And: a musician who rode the rails in his youth shares the slang he...