take the cake

1. 1.

   rank first; used often in a negative context

   “He takes the cake for chutzpah!”

   Broaderwin

Questions about take the cake

What does take the cake mean?

take the cake means "rank first; used often in a negative context".

Is take the cake a common word?

take the cake is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.