frangipani

Meaning

Noun

• Any of several tropical American trees, of the genus Plumeria, having fragrant, showy, funnel-shaped flowers of a wide range of colours from creamy to red.
• A perfume originally obtained from these flowers

Origin

• 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.