the.com/gingerbread man

means A flat, spiced cookie cut and decorated in the shape of a little human figure.

from 'Gingerbread' itself traces back through Old French gingembre to Latin and ultimately Greek/Sanskrit roots for the ginger root — but the bread sense got layered on by folk etymology, reshaping the word to sound like 'bread' even though it originally had nothing to do with baking. Shaping the stuff into little men is a much later, simpler twist: bakers molding spiced dough into human form, a tradition old enough that the running-away folktale had centuries of cookies to attach itself to.