1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Scone (cake)

SCONE, the Scots name of a species of cake made of wheat or barley meal and baked on a griddle. The cakes are round and are usually cut into four pieces, thus giving the familiar shape of a wedge with circular edge. The broad lowland bonnet was called a “ scone ” or “ scone-cap ” from its shape. The word appears to have been a shortened form of a Low Ger. Schonbrot, i.e. fine bread, explained in the Bremen Glossary (1771), quoted in the New English Dictionary, as a sort of white loaf with two acute and two obtuse angles. The Hamburg dialect word schönroggen, fine rye, was adopted into Swedish and Icelandic in the sense of biscuit.