What is "macaroni"

Macaroni \Mac`a*ro"ni\, n.; pl. Macaronis, or Macaronies. [Prov. It. macaroni, It. maccheroni, fr. Gr. ? happiness, later, a funeral feast, fr. ? blessed, happy. Prob. so called because eaten at such feasts in honor of the dead; cf. Gr. ? blessed, i. e., dead. Cf. Macaroon.]

1. Long slender tubes made of a paste chiefly of a wheat flour such as semolina, and used as an article of food; a form of Italian pasta.

   Note: A paste similarly prepared is largely used as food in Persia, India, and China, but is not commonly made tubular like the Italian macaroni.
   --Balfour (Cyc. of India).

2. A medley; something droll or extravagant.

3. A sort of droll or fool. [Obs.]
   --Addison.

4. A finical person; a fop; -- applied especially to English fops of about 1775, who affected the mannerisms and clothing of continental Europe.
   --Goldsmith.

5. pl. (U. S. Hist.) The designation of a body of Maryland soldiers in the Revolutionary War, distinguished by a rich uniform.
   --W. Irving.

"tube-shaped food made of dried wheaten paste" [Klein], 1590s, from southern Italian dialectal maccaroni (Italian maccheroni), plural of maccarone, name for a kind of pasty food, possibly from maccare "bruise, batter, crush," which is of unknown origin, or from late Greek makaria "food made from barley."\n

\nUsed by 1769 to mean "a fop, a dandy" ("typical of elegant young men" would be the sense in "Yankee Doodle") because it was an exotic dish at a time when certain young men who had traveled the continent were affecting French and Italian fashions and accents. There is said to have been a Macaroni Club in Britain, which was the immediate source of this usage in English.

n. 1 (context uncountable English) A type of pasta in the form of short tubes; ''sometimes loosely'', pasta in general. (from 17th c.) 2 (context pejorative now historical English) A fop, a dandy; especially a young man in the 18th century who had travelled in Europe and who dressed and often spoke in an ostentatiously affected Continental manner. (from 17th c.)

1. n. a British dandy in the 18th century who affected Continental mannerisms; "Yankee Doodle stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni"

2. pasta in the form of slender tubes

3. [also: macaronies (pl)]

Macaroni is a variety of dry pasta in the shape of narrow tubes originating from Italy and made with durum wheat, usually without egg. It is normally cut in short lengths; if cut in lengths with a curve it is sometimes called elbow macaroni. Some home machines can make macaroni shapes but, like most pasta, macaroni is usually made commercially by large-scale extrusion. The curved shape is caused by different speeds on opposite sides of the pasta tube as it comes out of the machine.

In North America, macaroni most often comes in elbow shape, while in Italy the noun maccheroni refers to straight tubular square-ended pasta corta ("short-length pasta"). Maccheroni may also refer to long pasta dishes such as 'Maccheroni alla chitarra' and 'Frittata di maccheroni', which are prepared with long pasta like spaghetti.

A macaroni (or formerly maccaroni) in mid-18th-century England was a fashionable fellow who dressed and even spoke in an outlandishly affected and epicene manner. The term pejoratively referred to a man who "exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion" in terms of clothes, fastidious eating, and gambling. He mixed Continental affectations with his English nature, like a practitioner of macaronic verse (which mixed English and Latin to comic effect), laying himself open to satire:

The macaronis were precursor to the dandies, who came as a more masculine reaction to the excesses of the macaroni, far from their present connotation of effeminacy.

Macaroni is a kind of pasta.

Macaroni may also refer to:

• Macaroni (fashion), also spelled maccaroni, an 18th-century English fashion trend
• Macaroni (film), a 1985 film directed by Ettore Scola, starring Jack Lemmon and Marcello Mastroianni
• Macaroni (horse) (1860–1887), winner of the 1863 Epsom Derby
• Sam Macaroni (born 1975), American filmmaker
• Macaroni penguin, a species of penguin found in the southern hemisphere
• Macaronic language, texts written in a mixture of languages

Macaroni is a 1985 Italian comedy film directed by Ettore Scola. The film was selected as the Italian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 58th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee.

Macaroni (1860–1887) was a British Thoroughbred racehorse and sire. In a career that lasted from October 1862 to September 1863 he ran eight times and won seven races. In 1863 he won all seven of his races including the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket, the Epsom Derby and the Doncaster Cup.