frangipani

Meanings

1. Any of several tropical American shrubs and trees of the genus Plumeria, having fragrant, showy, funnel-shaped flowers of a wide range of colours from creamy to red.
2. A flower of these plants.
3. A perfume obtained from this plant or imitating the odour of its flowers.
4. Alternative form of frangipane (“cream made from ground almonds; pastry filled with this cream”).

Etymology

From French frangipane, from Italian frangipane. Possibly named after Muzio Frangipane, a 16th-century marquess of the Italian noble Frangipani family, who invented a plumeria-scented perfume. The name Frangipane derives from frangere (“to break”) + pane (“bread”), a reference to the family's distribution of bread in time of famine.