manna

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)Food miraculously produced for the Israelites in the desert in the book of Exodus.

   “And when the dew that lay was gone up, behold, upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground. And when the children of Israel saw it, they said one to another, It is manna: for they wist not what it was. And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the LORD hath given you to eat.”

   “In the juriſdiction of Huquang there are ſeveral places where they gather up great store of Manna, which the Natives take for a Frozen Dew.”

   “The leaves of the foreſt were loaded with manna, pure amber dropped from every bough, honey diſtilled from the rifted rock, and the humming bee, drunk with joy, ſtrayed from flower to flower, forgetful of his burſting cells.”

2. (broadly, countable, uncountable)Any boon which comes into one's hands by good luck.

   “Fair ladies, you drop manna in the way / Of starved people.”

   “The introduction of technical progress in this model can be made in a very simple manner if we assume that it is of the ‘disembodied’ type, that is, something like manna that falls from heaven on all capital goods, old and new. [emphasis in original]”

3. (countable, uncountable)The sugary sap of the manna gum tree which oozes out from holes drilled by insects and falls to the ground around the tree.

   “1966, Bill Beatty, Tales of Old Australia, National Distributors, →ISBN, page 14, discussing old Australian foods The icing on the cake was made from manna, which was gathered under the manna gums. Manna mixed with milk made a splendid icing.”

name

1. A surname from Italian.
2. A surname from Bengali.