noodle

¹ American  

[nood-l] / ˈnud l /

noun

1. a narrow strip of unleavened egg dough that has been rolled thin and dried, boiled, and served alone or in soups, casseroles, etc.; a ribbon-shaped pasta.

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noodle ² American  

[nood-l] / ˈnud l /

noun

1. Slang.

   1. the head.

   2. the mind.

2. a fool or simpleton.

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noodle ³ American  

[nood-l] / ˈnud l /

verb (used without object)

noodled, noodling

1. to improvise a musical passage in a casual manner, especially as a warm-up exercise.

2. Informal.

   1. to play; toy.

      to noodle with numbers as a hobby.

   2. 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)

noodled, noodling

1. Informal.

   1. to manipulate or tamper with.

      She denied that she had noodled the statistics to get a favorable result.

   2. to make or devise freely as an exercise or experiment (sometimes followed byup ).

      The architects noodled up a model of a solar house.

verb phrase

1. noodle around to play, experiment, or improvise.

noodle ⁴ American  

[nood-l] / ˈnud l /

verb (used with or without object)

Chiefly Midland U.S.

noodled, noodling

1. to catch fish, especially catfish, with only one’s bare hands.

   We watched him noodle a 62-pound flathead catfish.

   Their video on how to noodle for some pretty monstrous catfish includes footage from several rivers in Oklahoma.

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noodle ¹ British  

/ ˈnuːdəl /

noun

1. a slang word for head

2. a simpleton

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noodle ² British  

/ ˈnuːdəl /

noun

1. (often plural) a ribbon-like strip of pasta: noodles are often served in soup or with a sauce

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noodle ³ British  

/ ˈnuːdəl /

verb

1. slang (intr) to improvise aimlessly on a musical instrument

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Other Word Forms

• noodler
  noun
• noodling
  noun

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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

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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.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

noodle noodled noodling

I met Zhang Chengxi, 29, at a noodle shop.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 1, 2026

The menus began modestly: my mom’s chicken noodle soup alongside store-bought tomato soup from the Whole Foods hot bar; my dad’s white chicken chili and a simple butternut squash soup scattered with chives.

From Salon ● Oct. 20, 2026

Walters learned to noodle when he was a young child.

From Slate ● Sep. 17, 2026

Some fast-food chains offer a free birthday meal or snack - Burger King members can claim a free Whopper or Plant-Based Whopper, while Chopstix offers a free small noodle box.

From BBC ● Sep. 3, 2026

He went to his hot plate, heated up some water, and made some chicken noodle Cup-a-Soup.

From "Maniac Magee" by Jerry Spinelli

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

There was kind of a lot of “Could you do a Season 4?” and we noodled around with the prison idea for a long time.

From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 5, 2019

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

She noodled at me, I noodled back at her, and her eyes crinkled charmingly whenever I managed a smidge of tuneful wit.

From Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

Iñárritu first started noodling on the idea of what would become “Digger” after making the 2015 frontier thriller “The Revenant,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 1, 2026

In a way, he says, noodling is an act of faith.

From Slate ● Sep. 17, 2026

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

He was going out, but also writing music at home, noodling on the piano.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 23, 2026

Kyle could tell they were already noodling out numbers.

From "Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics" by Chris Grabenstein

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