Macaronies

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A type of pasta that is thin and tubular in shape, often used in various dishes and recipes
2. A playful term referring to overly elaborate or ostentatious styles, often used in a humorous context
3. A historical term for a certain fashion trend in 18th-century England, characterized by flamboyance and extravagant clothing choices

Etymology: The plural "macaronies" belongs to a word with a surprisingly tangled history. In eighteenth-century Britain, a "macaroni" was a fop: a young man who had toured Italy and returned dressed in extravagant continental fashions, with towering wigs and flamboyant clothes. The Macaroni Club, a society of such dandies, gave the name its fashionable sense, and that sense is the one that lies behind the playful modern meaning of ostentatious excess. The Italian word itself, "maccarone", had once been used of fools and bumpkins, so the English sense was a sharp reversal of the Italian one. The food word and the fop word are not obviously connected, and their origins are debated. The Italian "maccheroni" is of uncertain origin. Some have linked it to Greek "makaria", a barley food, or to "maccare", a verb meaning "to crush", though none of these is certain. The English use of the plural "macaronies" for the fops is a separate sense from the food, which entered English earlier, from Italian and in turn from French "macaron".

Synonyms: pasta