macaroni

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   pasta formed into narrow tubes, especially short curved tubes

   She stirred grated cheese into the hot macaroni.

2. 2
   noun

   historical: an eighteenth-century British man who affected extravagant Continental fashion, manners, and taste

   The portrait shows a macaroni in a towering wig and brilliantly coloured coat.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Macaroni entered English in the early 16th century from Italian macaroni, ultimately from Greek makaria, “food made from barley.” In 18th-century Britain, macaroni also came to denote a young man who had travelled abroad and affected exaggerated continental fashions, producing the later sense “dandy.”

From Italian maccheroni, plural of maccherone, a pasta name of uncertain origin. In eighteenth-century Britain, travellers associated Continental food and taste with fashionable sophistication; macaroni became the name of an extravagantly dressed subculture and then a term for one of its members.

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary