macaroni
Americannoun
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small, tubular pasta prepared from wheat flour.
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an English dandy of the 18th century who affected Continental mannerisms, clothes, etc.
noun
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pasta tubes made from wheat flour
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(in 18th-century Britain) a dandy who affected foreign manners and style
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of macaroni
1590–1600; earlier maccaroni < dialectal Italian, plural of maccarone ( Italian maccherone ). See macaroon
Explanation
Macaroni is a short, skinny, tube-shaped pasta. Many kids — and adults — would name "macaroni and cheese" as one of their favorite foods. At some Italian restaurants, you can order macaroni as a side dish, and it's easy to cook at home with tomato sauce or butter and cheese. Macaroni and cheese can be cooked on the stove or baked in the oven with a crunchy breadcrumb topping. Macaroni began to have the second meaning of "fop" or "dandy" around 1780, named for the well-traveled youths who ate what was considered fancy and exotic at the time — macaroni.
Vocabulary lists containing macaroni
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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:
Fold the dressing through elbow macaroni, then lean into the nostalgia.
From Salon ● Jul. 7, 2026
“It’s not the same to eat a plate of macaroni at 8 a.m. as it is at 3 p.m.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 3, 2026
The youngest students are the most sceptical, she says, until kelp is folded into something familiar like macaroni and cheese.
From BBC ● Apr. 29, 2026
His 18th-century forerunners, the London macaroni and the Paris incroyable, had one foot in the court and the other in the city street, but the dandy, posh or not, lived in a middle-class, democratic society.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 15, 2026
He hopped up on the table and considered the plate full of macaroni and cheese.
From "Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures" by Kate DiCamillo
Do not look at either biscuits or macaronies; you have fruits of all kinds, confitures and much else that you may safely indulge in, according to my principles.
From The Physiology of Taste by Robinson, Fayette
The beaux distinguished themselves by their adroitness in replenishing this pot from a huge copper tea-kettle which would have made the pigmy macaronies of these degenerate days sweat merely to look at it.
From Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 by Sylvester, Charles Herbert
I would not give one for all the macaronies in England, with their powder and their snuff-boxes.
From Love and Life An Old Story in Eighteenth Century Costume by Yonge, Charlotte Mary
The beaux distinguished themselves by their adroitness in replenishing this pot from a huge copper tea-kettle, which would have made the pigmy macaronies of these degenerate days sweat merely to look at it.
From Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete by Irving, Washington
At times, all should take as much soup, potage, fish, etc., and also meat cooked with rice and macaronies, pastry, creams, etc.
From The Physiology of Taste by Robinson, Fayette
Scientists are watching closely now to see how bird flu interacts with the different penguin species, which on South Georgia include kings, gentoos, macaronis and chinstraps.
From BBC ● Mar. 11, 2024
Chile is home to four kinds, but the macaronis live offshore, outside the tourist cone.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 1, 2016
The rockies and macaronis revisit the same colony and breeding site every year.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 1, 2016
Sixty-nine penguins — gentoos, macaronis and rockhoppers — have marched over to their new home, which opens to the public on Monday.
From US News ● Apr. 13, 2016
No one saw the fire lighted, but after the disaster a certain number of little fuse-sticks which the Germans frequently use for the purpose of fire-raising, and which the peasants call "macaronis," were collected.
From The New York Times Current History, A Monthly Magazine The European War, March 1915 by Various
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.
