Meaning of cakes and ale | Babel Free

Definitions

1. The simple material pleasures of life.
   British, dated, idiomatic, plural, plural-only
2. Lively fun and merrymaking.
   British, dated, idiomatic, plural, plural-only

Equivalents

Examples

“To furnish the cakes and ale of the mind, is, we take it, the proper virtue of novels. It is for mental delight and recreation that we resort to them.”

“Doſt thou thinke becauſe thou art vertuous, there ſhall be no more Cakes and Ale?”

CEFR level