Everyday LifeGreek → English
Macaroni
/ˌmækəˈroʊni/noun
Short curved tubes of pasta.
The Greek roots
μακαρία
makaría
barley food, broth
Literally: “barley food”
Follow a root:μακαρία1 word
The story of the word
Italian maccheroni goes back through Neapolitan to a Late Greek word for a barley dish, though the derivation is argued and some connect it instead to μακάριος, blessed, through food eaten at funerals. The eighteenth-century English sense is the odd one: a macaroni was a young man who had done the Grand Tour and came home in absurd wigs and Italian tastes. That is what Yankee Doodle means by sticking a feather in his cap and calling it macaroni.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Italian → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
Same family
macaroonmacaronic
In a sentence
The children will eat macaroni and almost nothing else.