gingerbread








noun

  1. a type of cake flavored with ginger and molasses.
  2. a rolled cookie similarly flavored, often cut in fanciful shapes, and sometimes frosted.
  3. elaborate, gaudy, or superfluous architectural ornamentation: a series of gables embellished with gingerbread.

adjective

  1. heavily, gaudily, and superfluously ornamented: a gingerbread style of architecture.

noun

  1. a moist brown cake, flavoured with ginger and treacle or syrup
    1. a rolled biscuit, similarly flavoured, cut into various shapes and sometimes covered with icing
    2. (as modifier)gingerbread man
    1. an elaborate but unsubstantial ornamentation
    2. (as modifier)gingerbread style of architecture
n.

late 13c., gingerbrar, from Old French ginginbrat “ginger preserve,” from Medieval Latin gingimbratus “gingered,” from gingiber (see ginger). The ending changed by folk etymology to -brede “bread,” a formation attested by mid-14c. Originally “preserved ginger,” the meaning “a kind of spiced cake” is from 15c. Figurative use, “showy, insubstantial” is from c.1600. Sense of “fussy decoration on a house” is first recorded 1757; gingerbread-work (1748) was a sailor’s term for carved decoration on a ship.

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