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
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
How do social media algorithms shape the way we communicate? A new book argues that the competition for clicks is changing the way we speak and write, from the so-called “YouTube accent” to the surprising evolution of the word preppy. Also: A...