Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Gingerbread |
GingerbreadNoun1. Cake flavored with ginger. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "gingerbread" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1380. (references) |
| Domain | Definitions |
Literature | Gingerbread The best used to be made at Grantham, and Grantham gingerbread was as much a locution as Everton toffy, or tuffy as we used to call it in the first half of the nineteenth century. To get the gilt off the gingerbread. To appropriate all the fun or profit and leave the caput mortuum behind. In the first half of the nineteenth century gingerbread cakes were profusely decorated with gold-leaf or Dutch-leaf, which looked like gold. Gingerbread (g soft). Brummagem wares, showy but worthless. The allusion is to the gilt gingerbread toys sold at fairs. Source: Brewer's Dictionary. |
Slang in 1811 | GINGERBREAD. A cake made of treacle, flour, and grated ginger; also money. He has the gingerbread; he is rich. Source: 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Vulgarity | Gaudy, tawdry, overornamented, baroque, rococo; bedizened, tricked out, gingerbread; obtrusive. |
Weakness | On its last legs; weak as a child, weak as a baby, weak as a chicken, weak as a cat, weak as a rat; weak as water, weak as water gruel, weak as gingerbread, weak as milk and water; colorless. |
Frail, fragile, shattery; flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, gimcrack, gingerbread; rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky; craichy; drooping, tottering; Verb:. | |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Gingerbread |
| English words defined with "gingerbread": Doom palm ♦ gingerbread man, Gingerbread plum, Gingerbread work. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "gingerbread": CONTENT, cookie cutter ♦ Gingerbread Husbands, GINGERBREAD WORK, Gorgibus ♦ pastry cutter. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | For Christmas my mom makes gingerbread men with little raisin nipples. (Caroline in the City; writing credit: Angela Carneiro) when she's dead boil her head, make it into gingerbread! (Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly; writing credit: Brian Comport; Maisie Mosco) | |
Lyrics | Here a man, there a man, lots of gingerbread men. (BIKE; performing artist: Pink Floyd) I've got a clan of gingerbread men. (BIKE; performing artist: Pink Floyd) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Gingerbread Boy (1934) The Gingerbread House (1996) Gingerbread Man (1985) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books |
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Theater & Movies | |||
Music |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit |  | Gingerbread house. Fernandez, Florida.Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| "Gingerbread" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 95.45% of the time. "Gingerbread" is used about 88 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 95.45% | 84 | 36,109 |
| Noun (proper) | 2.27% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Lexical Verb (infinitive) | 1.14% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Noun (common) | 1.14% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 88 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "gingerbread": gingerbread man ♦ Gingerbread plum ♦ Gingerbread tree ♦ Gingerbread work. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "gingerbread": gingerbread-men, gingerbread-style. | |
Ending with "gingerbread": gilt-and-gingerbread. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Language | Translations for "gingerbread"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Albanian | kek me xhinxhefill. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Arabic | خبز الزنجبيل. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bulgarian | натруфен (dressy, elaborate, luxurious, ornate, orotund, tacky, tawdry, twopence colored, twopence coloured), безвкусен (conspicuous, flavorless, flavourless, gaudy, insipid, meretricious, savorless, savourless, tasteless, tawdry, tinsel, twopence colored, twopence coloured, unpalatable, unsavory, unsavoury, vapid, watery, wishy washy), пищен (baronial, exuberant, flamboyant, florid, gaudy, gorgeous, lavish, lordly, luscious, lush, luxuriant, opulent, palatial, pompous, profuse, rich, riotous, spectacular, splendid, theatrical, voluptuous, wanton). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chinese | 薑餅 . (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Czech | perník. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Danish | honningkage. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dutch | peperkoek, ontbijtkoek. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Finnish | piparkakku (gingerbread biscuit). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
French | pain d'épice, bonhomme en pain d'épice. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
German | lebkuchen, pfefferkuchen. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greek | άρτοσ αρωματισμένοσ με τζίντζερ, ψωμί με μπαχαρικά. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | gyömbérkenyér, csiricsáré (flash, flashy, gimcrack, showy, tacky, tawdry). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | pan pepato, pan di zenzero (parliament), pain d'épices. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Manx | arran jinshar. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Norwegian | honningkake. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | ingerbreadgay pão-de-espécie, cerveja de gengibre (ginger beer). (various references) turtã dulce. (various references) пышный (baronial, costly, flamboyant, high-sounding, luxuriant, opulent, pompous, purple, showy, voluptuous). (various references) medenjak (honey cake). (various references) pan de jengibre, pan de especias. (various references) pepparkaka. (various references) เครื่องประ"ับหรูหรา, ปรุงรส"้วยขิง, ขนมรสขิง. (various references) gösterişli (artsy, Arty, arty-crafty, baronial, bombastic, chichi, dashing, declamatory, dressy, flamboyant, flash, flashily, flashy, flatulent, Flossy, garish, glossy, meretricious, Nobby, ostentatious, polished, posh, showy, sleek, smart, spectacular, splendent, sporty, swanky, swish, thoroughbred, viewy), zencefilli çörek (gingersnap), süslü dekor, aşırı süslü (overwrought). (various references) імбирний пряник (parliament). (various references) loè loẹt (catchpenny, flash, flashy, garish, gaudy, rococo, showy, tawdry, tinty), h o nhoáng (flashy, glossy, spicy, tawdry), bánh gừng. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "gingerbread": gingerbreaded, gingerbreads, gingerbready. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "gingerbread" (pronounced ji"njerbre'd) |
| 4 | -b r e' d | cornbread, inbred. |
| 3 | -r e' d | bedspread. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-b-d-e-e-g-g-i-n-r-r" | |
-2 letters: badgering, debarring, gaberdine, gregarine, grenadier, regarding, regearing, regrading, rereading. | |
-3 letters: abridger, agreeing, bearding, beggared, beringed, braggier, breading, breeding, deringer, draggier, dreggier, gardener, garnered, gingered, raggeder, regained, regainer, renigged, rerigged. | |
-4 letters: abridge, angered, angrier, badging, baggier, barding, barging, barnier, barring, beadier, beading, bearing, berried, bragged, bragger, braider, brained, brander, brigade, brigand, bringer, deraign, derange. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-b-d-e-e-g-g-i-n-r-r" | |
+1 letter: gingerbreads, gingerbready. | |
+2 letters: gingerbreaded. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)47 69 6E 67 65 72 62 72 65 61 64 |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references)--. .. -. --. . .-. -... .-. . .- -.. |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01000111 01101001 01101110 01100111 01100101 01110010 01100010 01110010 01100101 01100001 01100100 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)G i n g e r b r e a d |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0047 0069 006E 0067 0065 0072 0062 0072 0065 0061 0064 |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)4175807371846884716770 |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Images: Photo Album 7. Usage Frequency 8. Expressions | 9. Expressions: Internet 10. Translations: Modern 11. Derivations 12. Rhymes | 13. Anagrams 14. Orthography 15. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
