Gingerbread
noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A type of cake whose main flavoring is ginger. countable, uncountable
- 2 cake flavored with ginger wordnet
- 3 Something ersatz; something showy but insubstantial. countable, figuratively, obsolete, uncountable
- 4 A flamboyant Victorian-era architectural style. countable, uncountable
"For a time modern architects took a starkly functional approach to the design of houses, emphasizing clean, uncluttered lines and rejecting most forms of wall ornamentation as dust-catching gingerbread."
- 1 To decorate or embellish in an ornate or intricate way. idiomatic, transitive, uncommon
Example
More examples"Mushrooms are not for rent and the gingerbread house is not to let at the moment."
Etymology
From Middle English gyngebred, gyngebrede, from Old French gingembras, gingimbrat (“preserved ginger”), from Medieval Latin *gingimbrātus (“gingered”, presumably referring to ginger that perhaps had a pharmaceutical use for some medicinal preparation), with the intrusive m added to gingiber, from Latin zingiber (“ginger”), of earlier Sanskrit origin, through Ancient Greek ζιγγίβερις (zingíberis). The third syllable was earlier confounded with bread, and the insertion of an r in the second syllable completed the semblance of a compound word: ginger + bread.
Related phrases
More for "gingerbread"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.