What does "gingerbread" mean?

Gingerbread: A kind of plain sweet cake seasoned with ginger, and sometimes made in fanciful shapes. "Gingerbread that was full fine." Chaucer. Gingerbread tree (Bot.), the doom palm; -- so called from the resemblance of its fruit to gingerbread. See Doom Palm. -- Gingerbread work, ornamentation, in architecture or decoration, of a fantastic, trivial, or tawdry character.