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From Middle English sake (“sake, cause”), from Old English sacu (“cause, lawsuit, legal action, complaint, issue, dispute”), from Proto-West Germanic *saku, from Proto-Germanic *sakō (“affair, thing, charge, accusation, matter”), from Proto-Indo-European *seh₂g- (“to investigate”).

Akin to West Frisian saak (“cause; business”), Low German Saak, Dutch zaak (“matter; cause; business”), German Sache (“thing; matter; cause; legal cause”), Danish sag, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish sak, Gothic 𐍃𐌰𐌺𐌾𐍉 (sakjō, “dispute, argument”), Old English sōcn (“inquiry, prosecution”), Old English sēcan (“to seek”). More at soke, soken, seek.

• IPA^(key): /ˈseɪ̯k/, [ˈseɪ̯k]

  • Audio (US):

    (file)

• Rhymes: -eɪk
• Hyphenation: sake

sake (plural sakes)

1. Cause, interest or account.

   For the sake of argument

2. Purpose or end; reason.

   For old times' sake

3. The benefit or regard of someone or something.
   • 1526, [William Tyndale, transl.], The Newe Testamẽt […] (Tyndale Bible), [Worms, Germany: Peter Schöffer], →OCLC, Matthew xxiiij:[22], folio xxxiiij, verso:

     Ne ãd except thoſe dayes ſhulde be ſhoꝛtened / ſhulde no fleſſe be faved: Butt foꝛ the choſens ſake thoſe dayes ſhalbe ſhoꝛtened.

   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

     When I gave a dinner there was generally a cover laid for him. I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me.

   • 2005, Plato, Sophist. Translation by Lesley Brown. 242a-b.

     But it will be for your sake that we'll undertake to refute this thesis, […]

4. (obsolete except in phrases) Contention, strife; guilt, sin, accusation or charge.
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Genesis 3:17:

     And unto Adam He said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.

• The word sake is virtually only used in constructions of the form "for X's sake" or "for the sake of X", where X is a noun (see the quotations above, for sake of, and for the sake of).

• Garner's Modern American Usage notes it is common to write an (unpronounced) apostrophe rather than apostrophe–ess in this construction when the noun ends in an /s/ or /z/ sound: for appearance' sake, for goodness' sake.

sake (countable and uncountable, plural sakes)

1. Alternative spelling of saké.

• KEAS, akes, seak, aske, kesa, Kase, Seka, keas

Short affiliative form of Ainu sa (“refrain, tone”).

• IPA^(key): /sa.ke/

sake (Kana spelling サケ, possessed form sakehe)

1. (inalienable, countable) A refrain of a song or poem (yukar).

   Tan sinotca sakehe k-esinotcaki wa k-epakasnu wa ku-inkar.

   I’m trying to lean how to sing the refrain of this song.

• Although being an affiliative form, the original word, sa, isn’t really used nowadays with the same meaning. Due to this, sake should be used both as its own conceptual form and affiliative form, where the long affiliative form is sakehe.

From Japanese 酒 (sake, “alcoholic drink”).

• IPA^(key): /sa.ke/

sake (Kana spelling サケ, possessed form sakehe)

1. (inalienable, uncountable) Sake, an alcoholic drink often made of rice.

   Paskur sake wente kusu, araykere.

   The crow was killed because he ruined the sake.

• sinotca (“song, music”)
• sinotcaki (“to sing, to make music”)

• saké, saki

From Japanese 酒 (sake, “alcoholic drink”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈsaː.keː/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Hyphenation: sa‧ke

sake m (uncountable, no diminutive)

1. sake (Japanese rice wine)

   Hypernyms: rijstbier, rijstwijn

From Japanese 酒 (sake, “alcoholic drink”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈsɑke/, [ˈs̠ɑ̝k̟e̞]
• Rhymes: -ɑke
• Syllabification^(key): sa‧ke
• Hyphenation^(key): sa‧ke

sake

1. sake (Japanese rice wine)

• “sake”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎^[1] (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 3 July 2023

• eksa-, seka-

• IPA^(key): /sà.kéː/
  • (Standard Kano Hausa) IPA^(key): [sə̀.céː]

sàkē m (possessed form sàken)

1. slackness

Borrowed from Japanese 酒(さけ) (sake, “alcoholic drink”).

• (Standard Indonesian) IPA^(key): /ˈsake/ [ˈsa.ke]
• Rhymes: -ake
• Syllabification: sa‧ke

saké

1. sake (Japanese rice wine)

Borrowed from Central Malay [Term?] (Basemah).

• (Standard Indonesian) IPA^(key): /ˈsake/ [ˈsa.ke]
• Rhymes: -ake
• Syllabification: sa‧ke

saké

1. (dialect, Basemah) harvesting is carried out when the coffee plant is six years old

• “sake”, in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia [Great Dictionary of the Indonesian Language] (in Indonesian), Jakarta: Agency for Language Development and Cultivation – Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia, 2016

sake

1. Rōmaji transcription of さけ
2. Rōmaji transcription of サケ

From Proto-Malayo-Polynesian *sakay.

sake

1. to board, to embark, to ride

From Old Dutch *saka, from Proto-West Germanic *saku.

sāke f

1. case, matter, affair
2. thing
3. cause, reason

• Dutch: zaak
• Limburgish: zaak

• “sake”, in Vroegmiddelnederlands Woordenboek, 2000
• Verwijs, E.; Verdam, J. (1885–1929), “sake”, in Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, →ISBN

Cognate with Farefare sakɛ

• IPA^(key): /sà.ke/

sake

1. to take out
2. to accept, agree, approve of, tolerate, permit, obey
3. to answer to a call
4. to succeed, do well

From English sake, when used in for sake of.

sake

1. because
   • 2025 April 23, Orla Guerin, “More dan 150 pipo injure as earthquakes shake buildings for Turkey Istanbul”, in BBC News Pidgin‎^[2]:

     Istanbul govnor office say at least 151 pipo injure afta dem jump from high places sake of panic wey di earthquake cause.

     The Istanbul governor's office says at least 151 people were injured after they jumped from high places because of the panic that the earthquake caused.

From Japanese 酒 (sake, “alcoholic drink”).

• IPA^(key): /²saːkə/

sake m (definite singular saken, indefinite plural sakar, definite plural sakane)

1. saké (Japanese rice wine)

   Hypernyms: risøl, risvin

• “sake” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

sake

1. inflection of saka (“one's own”):
   1. masculine/neuter locative singular
   2. masculine accusative plural
   3. feminine vocative singular

Borrowed from Japanese 酒 (sake, “alcoholic drink”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈsa.kɛ/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -akɛ
• Syllabification: sa‧ke

sake n (indeclinable)

1. sake (Japanese rice wine)

• “sake”, in Wielki słownik języka polskiego‎^[3] (in Polish), Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
• “sake”, in Polish dictionaries at PWN‎^[4] (in Polish)

• saquê, saqué

Unadapted borrowing from Japanese 酒 (sake, “alcoholic drink”).

sake m (plural sakes)

1. sake (Japanese rice wine)

For quotations using this term, see Citations:saquê.

Borrowed from French saké, from Japanese 酒 (sake, “alcoholic drink”).

sake n (uncountable)

1. sake

Borrowed from Japanese 酒 (sake, “alcoholic drink”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈsake/ [ˈsa.ke]
• Rhymes: -ake
• Syllabification: sa‧ke
• Homophone: saque

sake m (plural sakes)

1. sake (Japanese rice wine)

• “sake”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025

• saké

sake c

1. saké (rice wine)

• “sake”, in Svensk ordbok [Dictionary of Swedish] (in Swedish)
• “sake”, in Svenska Akademiens ordlista [Wordlist of the Swedish Academy] (in Swedish)
• “sake”, in Svenska Akademiens ordbok [Dictionary of the Swedish Academy] (in Swedish)