gingerbread
Americannoun
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a type of cake flavored with ginger and molasses.
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a rolled cookie similarly flavored, often cut in fanciful shapes, and sometimes frosted.
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elaborate, gaudy, or superfluous architectural ornamentation.
a series of gables embellished with gingerbread.
adjective
noun
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a moist brown cake, flavoured with ginger and treacle or syrup
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a rolled biscuit, similarly flavoured, cut into various shapes and sometimes covered with icing
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( as modifier )
gingerbread man
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an elaborate but unsubstantial ornamentation
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( as modifier )
gingerbread style of architecture
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Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of gingerbread
1250–1300; Middle English gingebreed (influenced by breed bread), variant of gingebrad, -brat ginger paste < Old French gingembras, -brat preserved ginger < Medieval Latin *gingi ( m ) brātum a medicinal preparation (neuter past participle), derivative of Latin gingiber ginger
Explanation
Gingerbread is a rich, spicy cake or cookie. Some people mark the Christmas season by making gingerbread houses covered in icing and candy. The key ingredient in this delicious treat is the spice called ginger. The original meaning of the word gingerbread was "preserved ginger," and then it came to mean "ginger candy made with honey and spices." It was some time in the 15th century that what we now know as gingerbread was first invented: a rich, flavorful cookie or cake full of ginger and other spices and sweetened with molasses.
Vocabulary lists containing gingerbread
Brown
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National Cookie Day
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
They come from a doum palm or gingerbread tree, known in the area as "mikwamo".
From BBC • Mar. 19, 2026
Think gingerbread men, only soft, chubby, and less fearful.
From Salon • Feb. 5, 2026
But in the meantime, seasonal enthusiasm for the house could be satisfied by a gingerbread facsimile thereof that was open to the public in Hollywood.
From MarketWatch • Dec. 29, 2025
“After packing gingerbread, dog cookies, and hot cocoa, off we went.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 4, 2025
She carried it to a gingerbread platform near the top of Molly’s Victorian house.
From "Frightful's Mountain" by Jean Craighead George
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
