cake-eater

English

Etymology

From the 1922 song "I'm a Cake Eating Man": "I'm a cake-eating man,/ Eat my cake where I can;/ I like a dapper flapper that shows a naughty knee,/ Who dances naughty jazz and shakes a naughty lingerie./ I'm there with my shoepolish hair,/ For I'm a mama-loving, cookie-chewing cake-eating man." Also abbreviated as 'Caker'. Technically, the Cake-Eater was the natural mate to the Flapper, as the Sheik had his Sheba, though one can assume that there was a good deal of mixing amongst this amorous aggregation of 'flaming youth'.

Noun

cake-eater (plural cake-eaters)

1. (slang) a lounge lizard This usage of the term dates from the 1920s, when it vied in popularity with 'sheik' to indicate a slick young Romeo who wows the flappers and likes the high life. A Cake-Eater, when he's not trolling for jazz-babies at the local speakeasy, likes to loiter at a girl's house and be pampered, especially by being served his sweetie's baked goods-- and of course some degree of sexual metaphor might be inferred.
2. (slang) someone of upper-class background, or who has been excessively well-off
   • 1956, Joseph Caruso, The Priest, ISBN 0405108214, page 158:

     "Nowadays, these cake-eaters all died young. They had no teeth. They all went to doctors who fixed teeth. But still they died young and without their teeth."

   • 2004, Zac Unger, Working Fire: The Making of an Accidental Fireman, page 8:

     "'... We got us a cake eater, right here at the sink!' He turned to me. 'Have you ever had your hands dirty, new kid?'"