Napoleon
nounA dessert of crisp puff pastry layered with cream or custard, also called a mille-feuille.
How to spell napoleon
8 letters · 4 syllables
How to pronounce napoleon
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does napoleon mean?
- nounA dessert of crisp puff pastry layered with cream or custard, also called a mille-feuille.
Napoleon in a sentence
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The bakery sold one last vanilla napoleon before closing.
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She ordered a chocolate napoleon with her afternoon coffee.
Where does napoleon come from?
Language of origin: French
This word is an eponym, taken directly from the name of Napoleon Bonaparte, the French general and emperor who dominated Europe in the early 1800s. His name was so famous that all sorts of things were named in his honour, and so the lower-case noun came to mean several quite separate objects. The gold coin called a napoleon was the twenty-franc piece first struck under his rule, bearing his portrait. The card game named napoleon (often shortened to 'nap') likewise borrowed his name for its boldest bid. The layered cream pastry is a slightly trickier case: many food historians think the dessert sense actually comes from the French adjective napolitain, meaning 'of Naples' or 'Neapolitan', and that the spelling drifted toward the emperor's more familiar name. Either way the word entered English in the nineteenth century, and the spelling trap is the unstressed middle: writers must remember the 'a' and the 'e' (na-po-le-on) rather than slipping in the wrong vowel.
How the word is built
- Napoleon (proper name of the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte)
- -on; the pastry sense is also linked to French napolitain 'of Naples'
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