Etymology Dictionary

MACARONI, MACCARONI,  a paste made of wheat flour.  (Ital.,—L.?)   'He doth learn to make strange sauces, to eat anchovies, maccaroni, bovoli, fagioli, and caviare;'  Ben Jonson, Cynthia's Revels, A. ii (Mercury).   'Macaroni, gobbets or lumps of boyled paste,' &c.; Minsheu, ed. 1627.—O. Ital. maccaroni, 'a kinde of paste meate boiled in broth, and drest with butter, cheese, and spice;' Florio.   The mod. Ital. spelling is maccheroni, properly the plural of maccherone, used in the sense of a 'macarone' biscuit.   β. Of somewhat doubtful origin; but prob. to be connected with Gk. μακαρία, a word used by Hesychius to denote βρῶμα ἐκ ζωμοῦ καὶ ἀλφίτων, a mess of broth and pearl-barley, a kind of porridge.   This word is derived by Curtius (i. 405) from Gk. μάσσειν, to knead, of which the base is μακ-; cf. Gk. μᾶζα, dough, Russ. muka, flour, meal.   γ. Similarly the Ital. macaroni is prob. from O. Ital. maccare, 'to bruise, to batter, to pester;' Florio.   And, again, the Ital. maccare is from a Lat. base mac-, to knead, preserved in the deriv. macerare, to macerate, reduce to pulp.   See Macerate.   δ. Thus the orig. sense seems to have been 'pulp;' hence anything of a pulpy or pasty nature.   Der. Macaron-ic, from F. macaronique, 'a macaronick, a confused heap or huddle of many severall things' (Cot.), so named from macaroni, which was orig. a mixed mess, as described by Florio above.   The name macaroni, according to Haydn, Dict. of Dates, was given to a poem by Theophilo Folengo (otherwise Merlinus Coccaius) in 1509; macaronic poetry is a kind of jumble, often written in a mixture of languages.   And see macaroon.