Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of various tropical American deciduous shrubs or trees of the genus Plumeria, having milky sap and showy, fragrant, funnel-shaped, variously colored flowers. Also called temple tree.
- n. A perfume derived from or similar in scent to the flowers of one of these shrubs or trees.
- n. A creamy pastry filling flavored with almonds.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A perfume prepared from, or imitating the odor of, the flower of a West Indian tree, Plumeria rubra, or red jasmine.
Wiktionary
- n. Any of several tropical American trees, of the genus Plumeria, having showy, funnel-shaped flowers
- n. A perfume originally obtained from these flowers
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A perfume derived from, or imitating the odor of, the flower of the red jasmine, a West Indian tree of the genus Plumeria.
WordNet 3.0
- n. any of various tropical American deciduous shrubs or trees of the genus Plumeria having milky sap and showy fragrant funnel-shaped variously colored flowers
Etymologies
- From an Italian noble family, a sixteenth-century marquess who invented a plumeria-scented perfume. The name comes from frangi "breaking" + pani "bread," a reference to the family's distribution of bread in time of famine. (Wiktionary)
- French frangipane, after Muzio Frangipani, 16th-century Italian marquis. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“These ganaches also come in other flavours, such as frangipani, lime, vervaine, lavender, blue lotus and tuberose!”
“In the Crawford Market I had watched the florists at work tearing the blossoms from a kind of frangipani known as the Temple”
“Use: Related to the frangipani but more drought tolerant, this small shrub is evergreen.”
Desert rose, dracaena and pothos: ornamental plants and flowers of tropical Mexico
“The tropical scent of frangipani and incense wafts throughout the indoor/outdoor living room surrounded by verdant rice paddy fields.”
The Huffington Post: Chip Conley: What's Your Daily Offering?
“If you check back you will notice I suggested we all start early ‘at that place opposite Avid with the courtyard and the frangipani trees out the back.’”
“Reminds me of a friend who was asked “What do they mean?” when she put those frangipani stickers on her car a few years back, as if it was some indication of a secret society.”
Cheeseburger Gothic » Open for business. The new renovated Ladies Lounge.
“Just a frangipani tree in the courtyard out the back.”
“Bob - that ensemble would look lovely with a little frangipani behind the ear …”
Cheeseburger Gothic » Open for business. The new renovated Ladies Lounge.
“Fifteen-year-old Kambili's world is circumscribed by the high walls and frangipani trees of her family compound.”
“Related to the frangipani, desert rose is green all year round.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘frangipani’.
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Aromata Aromatica
Fragrant things and terms that describe them. Generic names of botanical binomials aren't capitalized if the unconventional lower case form has a useful Wordnik definition. I'm primarily seeking te...
hircine, ajwain, alliin, anisaldehyde, sotolon, spicebush, sweetbox, wintergreen, valencene, citrusy, citronellal, full-bodied and 162 more...
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Perfumery
perfume, perfumer, aromachologist, fougère, le nez, civet, perfumer's organ, Tapputi, Eau de Cologne, eau de toilette, eau de perfume, eaux and 92 more...
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tropic topics
tropical topicals
subtropic, phototropic, hypermetropic, geotropic, eolotropic, pleiotropic, inotropic, adrenocorticotropic, coptic tropic, apogeotropic, allotropic, orthotropic and 76 more...
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fraga
Ovid's "montanaque fraga"
Fraga is Latin for strawberry. strawberry has many fascinating appellations. The three native american appellations ( oteagh-minick, otei-meena, and o-da-e-min) have...fraga, estaffettes, oteagh-minick, strawberry, otei-meena, o-da-e-min, erdbeere, frngo, cragginess, ttreaxoherige, itreowberie, fragrance and 2 more...
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Shopping From Home (For Words)
The list begins with evocative words I found in a Bed Bath & Beyond catalog, but other words in a similar vein are welcome, with two simple rules: they must come out of catalogs, and they can't...
sconce, mercer, urn, crock, pique, taffeta, chenille, ensemble, crescent, flocked, stockpot, microfiber and 40 more...
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The Sweet Smell of...
Things that smell good.
rain, rose, cinnamon, clove, jasmine, apple, sandalwood, rexo, bamboo, bacon, maple, eucalyptus and 36 more...
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Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
thunderfuck, incredible, merp, sara, flopparoo, smother, fugly, buer, plum, canny, nefelibata, cuntbucket and 1972 more... -
Favorite Tangible Object Words
Trimming the "Chained Bear's Favorites" list so I don't crash people's computers... like my own...
castanets, whaup, budgie, wallabies, ring-wraith, hobbit, chinchilla, guano, merganser, phalarope, phalarope, curlew and 138 more...
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Flora
fenugreek, verbena, saxifrage, arbutus, calendula, nasturtium, lobelia, hellebore, rhododendron, philodendron, bellflower, heuchera and 449 more...
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sionnach's Words
contumely, fomite, holmgang, poltroon, eleemosynary, obsidian, nugatory, grindcore, felch, recrudescent, pyx, parenteral and 3271 more...
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lanklenmot's Words
ineluctable, prelapsarian, bien pensant, prospero, preternatural, gratifying, iconoclast, cineast, persnickety, tumescent, galvanize, pap and 887 more...
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tez's Words
tain, curlicue, eidolon, exoteric, puissant, ragamuffin, insouciant, yarrow, taciturn, mundane, vomitorium, tenebre and 140 more...
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...:::bella:::...
originally started as an attempt to collect words I found visually and auditorially beautiful, as well as psychically evocative, this has become nothing more than a grab bag of word curiosities, a ...
bergamot, jambalaya, bee's knees, heliotrope, hosanna, gamboge, aureole, filial, madrigal, multilingual, sacrosanct, sojourn and 1072 more...
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Another day, a whole nother list
rump, spot on, flank, outflank, rank, bedeck, leafhopper, apocope, academic, set-to, point of no return, cloy and 210 more...
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embellish
and embellishment and embellishing
trim, deck, dress, garnish, adorn, embroider, grace, decorate, aggrandize, dramatize, dramatise, pad and 64 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for frangipani.

chained_bear Gah! I found a typo, and I don't want to fix it, or it'll look like I just made this comment!
Also, every time I see this word, I think of the mean chick in "Strictly Ballroom." Heh. May 30, 2008
chained_bear The Frangipani Society of Australia has an interesting webpage about this shrub. Also an interesting logo. (Didn't think it would be kosher to put the website here, but it's easily found by Googling. Feb 3, 2007