noodle
1 Americannoun
noun
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Slang.
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the head.
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the mind.
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a fool or simpleton.
verb (used without object)
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to improvise a musical passage in a casual manner, especially as a warm-up exercise.
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Informal.
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to play; toy.
to noodle with numbers as a hobby.
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to improvise, experiment, or think creatively.
The writers noodled for a week and came up with a better idea for the ad campaign.
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verb (used with object)
verb phrase
verb (used with or without object)
noun
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a slang word for head
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a simpleton
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of noodle1
First recorded in 1770–80; from German Nudel
Origin of noodle2
First recorded in 1745–55; perhaps variant of noddle (with oo from fool 1 )
Origin of noodle3
An Americanism dating back to 1935–40; origin uncertain
Origin of noodle4
First recorded in 1920–25; origin unknown
Explanation
A noodle is a piece of pasta, especially a long, skinny one. You can eat noodles with butter and cheese or sauce, or slurp them from a bowl of soup. Noodles are cut or rolled from a dough that contains some kind of flour — wheat, buckwheat, and rice flour are all commonly used. In Thai food, you'll find wide and thin rice noodles, while Italian food contains many varieties of noodles made from semolina flour, like spaghetti and lasagna. Informally, you can call your head a noodle too. Both meanings have uncertain origins; all we know for sure is that noodle comes from the German Nudel.
Vocabulary lists containing noodle
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
"We're worried," said Samuel Fu, who works in a noodle shop in the coastal district of Bali, in New Taipei City.
From Barron's ● Jul. 10, 2026
They’re the backbone of everything from Chinese tomato-and-egg stir-fries to noodle dishes whose sauces somehow taste deeper than the sum of their parts.
From Salon ● Jul. 8, 2026
The restaurateur is the third generation of his family to run Wattana Panich, famed for the geriatric “mother stock” that forms the backbone of its signature beef noodle soup.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 30, 2026
On stage, there is a camaraderie between the musicians, who interact playfully with their frontman, twirling him around the stage, or parting ways to let him noodle around on a vintage synthesiser.
From BBC ● Jun. 13, 2026
“Okay,” I say, pointing to the wire basket with a floatable noodle around the rim so it sits in the water, tied to me so it won’t drift away.
From "Shouting at the Rain" by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
A lawyer by training, he seems to function primarily by breaking any challenge into small pieces to be noodled over at tedious length one by one.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 5, 2026
There is Vicente Iborra, a 34-year-old midfielder who struggled to make an impact at Leicester City, and Pervis Estupiñán, the young Ecuadorean left back who noodled around the great Watford loan factory for a while.
From New York Times ● Apr. 25, 2022
His first great muse, a Weimaraner called Man Ray, noodled around in front of the camera until Wegman decided to click the shutter.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 5, 2019
At first our voices wavered, our raised arms noodled, and our overall mien lacked sternness.
From Slate ● Apr. 21, 2016
The feeding period where geese are noodled usually extends from 3 to 4 weeks.
From Ducks and Geese by Harry M. Lamon
Overcoming the aerodynamic drag inherent with a trad-core design was a degree-of-difficulty multiplier for Rivian’s team, requiring lots of computer simulation and iterative, millimeter-scale noodling.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 27, 2026
And you’re like, “I don’t know if I can jam. I was trying to write a song and now you’re noodling all over me. You know what? I’ll just put it down.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 11, 2026
“Love’s Labor’s Lost,” with or without the British “u,” is a very youthful, disjointed text, its thin thread of plot repeatedly cut by clowns, dullards, puns, pomposities and noodling that goes nowhere.
From New York Times ● Jul. 27, 2023
By age 3 he was noodling on piano keys and singing at services, with churchgoers sometimes hoisting him on a milk crate so the congregation could see him belting Aretha Franklin songs.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 16, 2023
Kyle could tell they were already noodling out numbers.
From "Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics" by Chris Grabenstein
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
