Goffer

Goffer, to give a fluted or crimped appearance to anything, particularly to linen or lace frills or trimmings by means of heated irons of a special shape, called goffering-irons or tongs. “Goffering,” or the French term gaufrage, is also used of the wavey or crimped edging in certain forms of porcelain, and also of the stamped or embossed decorations on the edges of the binding of books. The French word gaufre, from which the English form is adapted, means a thin cake marked with a pattern like a honeycomb, a “wafer,” which is etymologically the same word. Waufre appears in the phrase un fer à waufres, an iron for baking cakes on (quotation of 1433 in J. B. Roquefort’s Glossaire de la langue romane). The word is Teutonic, cf. Dutch wafel, Ger. Waffel, a form seen in “waffle,” the name given to the well-known batter-cakes of America. The “wafer” was so called from its likeness to a honeycomb, Wabe, ultimately derived from the root wab-, to weave, the cells of the comb appearing to be woven together.

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