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.
Origin of noodle
1
First recorded in 1770–80,noodle is from the German word Nudel
noodle
2
[nood-l]
noun
Slang. the head.
a fool or simpleton.
Origin of noodle
2
1745–55; perhaps variant of noddle (with oo from fool1)
noodle
3
[nood-l]
verb (used without object),noo·dled,noo·dling.
to improvise a musical passage in a casual manner, especially as a warm-up exercise.
Informal.
to play; toy: to noodle with numbers as a hobby.
to improvise, experiment, or think creatively: The writers noodled for a week and came up with a better idea for the ad campaign.
verb (used with object),noo·dled,noo·dling.
Informal.
to manipulate or tamper with: She denied that she had noodled the statistics to get a favorable result.
to make or devise freely as an exercise or experiment (sometimes followed by up): The architects noodled up a model of a solar house.
Verb Phrases
noodle around, Informal. to play, experiment, or improvise.
Origin of noodle
3
An Americanism dating back to 1935–40; origin uncertain
"narrow strip of dried dough," 1779, from German Nudel, which is of unknown origin. West Flemish noedel and French nouille are German loan-words. The older noun meaning "simpleton, stupid person" (1753) probably is an unrelated word, as is the slang word for "head" (attested from 1914).
v.
1937 (implied in noodling), from noun meaning "improvised music," 1926, probably from noodle (n.), on analogy of the suppleness of the food and that of the trills and improvised phrases in jazz improvisations. Related: Noodled.
