spaghetti
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: spə-gĕtʹē
ipa: /spəˈɡɛti/
ipa: /spəˈɡɛti/
ipa: [-ɾi]
rhymes: -ɛti
Forms: form: spaghettis
Etymology: The noun is borrowed from Italian spaghetti, the plural of spaghetto (“dish of spaghetti; (rare) strand of spaghetti”), from spago (“cord, string, twine; thread”) + -etto (diminutive suffix). Spago is derived from Latin spagus (“twine”), probably from Ancient Greek σφάκος (sphákos, “apple sage (Salvia pomifera)”), probably from Pre-Greek.
The verb is derived from the noun.
Senses: examples: text: Her mother was cooking spaghetti for dinner.
text: Maccheroni, or Spaghetti, a smaller kind of macaroni, sufficient for the dinner of an ordinary mortal, generally follows the soup. It is as a rule served up with tomato sauce, and Parmesan cheese thickly scattered over it.
ref: 1888, Isabella Beeton, “General Observations on Italian Cookery”, in The Book of Household Management; […], new edition, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward, Lock and Co. […], →OCLC, paragraph 2952, page 1298:
synonyms: word: pasghetti
word: sketti
word: spag
glosses: A type of pasta made in the shape of long thin strings.
synonyms: word: pasghetti
word: sketti
word: spag
word: spag
glosses: A type of pasta made in the shape of long thin strings.
A dish that has spaghetti (sense 1) as a main part of it, such as spaghetti bolognese.
glosses: Denoting Italianness.
An Italian person.
topics: broadcasting
film
media
television
glosses: Denoting Italianness.
Ellipsis of spaghetti western (“a motion picture depicting a story of cowboys and desperadoes set in the American Old West, but produced by an Italian-based company and filmed in Europe, notably in Italy”).
examples: text: spaghetti grid    spaghetti junction    spaghetti limbs    spaghetti strap    spaghetti stripes
text: Or how about that spaghetti of cables, adaptors and plugs you keep in a box somewhere, the detritus of old phones, laptops and tablets — each with a different charging point — is that not an example of staggeringly wasteful, bad design?
ref: 2015 October 30, Edwin Heathcote, “Design horrors: the bad, the ugly and the dysfunctional”, in Financial Times:
text: “But the infrastructure is like spaghetti,” he continued. “It’s chaotic, it doesn’t connect up and there’s no cohesive network. If you can get that right, it will eliminate a lot of confusion.”
ref: 2021 October 4, Liz Alderman, quoting Mikael Colville-Andersen, “As bikers throng the streets, ‘it’s like Paris is in anarchy’”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 08 Apr 2023:
glosses: Something physically resembling spaghetti (sense 1) in appearance or consistency, or in being tangled.
topics: business
electrical
electrical-engineering
electricity
electromagnetism
energy
engineering
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
physics
glosses: Something physically resembling spaghetti (sense 1) in appearance or consistency, or in being tangled.
Electrical insulating tubing or electrical wiring.
topics: road
transport
glosses: Something physically resembling spaghetti (sense 1) in appearance or consistency, or in being tangled.
Roads forming a complex junction, especially one with multiple levels on a motorway.
examples: text: The lands along the Danube, by contrast, seemed wide open. That is, if he could find his way through them. “Arrows drawn on maps build up into an astonishing spaghetti of population movement,” Mr. Winder writes, and a single city like Lviv, now in Ukraine, might also have been called Lemberg, Lemberik, Lwow or Lvov.
ref: 2014 February 10, Stephen Heyman, “A Literary Tour on the Blue Danube”, in The New York Times:
text: In an age when the charts have become an algorithmic spaghetti of streaming plays, radio and downloads, the purest way of measuring who is up and who is down in pop might be the Billboard Social 50, a sub-chart that measures reach across social networks.
ref: 2017 May 23, Gavin Haynes, “Why BTS are the K-pop kings of social media”, in The Guardian:
text: Then there’s payments tech. Over the past decade, private equity has been instrumental in consolidating that industry; Worldpay and Nexi serve as two good examples. And while the logic of creating economies of scale was simple, this created a spaghetti of IT technical debt with disparate systems, which hampered the speed of innovation.
ref: 2023 March 16, Rupak Ghose, “Can payments eat the world?”, in Financial Times:
glosses: Something confusing or intricate.
topics: computing
engineering
mathematics
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
programming
sciences
glosses: Something confusing or intricate.
Ellipsis of spaghetti code (“unstructured or poorly structured program source code, especially code with many GOTO statements or their equivalent”).
Derived terms: word: pasghetti
word: sketti
word: spaghettification
word: spaghettify
word: spag
word: spag bol
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: cable spaghetti
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: Flying Spaghetti Monster
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: flying spaghetti monster
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spag bol
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti and meatballs
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti bender
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti bolognaise
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti bolognese
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti bowl
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti bowl effect
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti box
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti chart
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti code
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti diagram
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti dress
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti junction
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti model
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti pizza
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti red
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti sauce
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti sort
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti squash
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti stack
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti strap
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti string
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti stringing
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti-strung
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti tongs
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti western
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti Western
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: spaghetti worm
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: throw spaghetti against the wall
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: throw spaghetti at the wall
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: upsetti spaghetti
sense: Compound words and expressions
word: vegetable spaghetti
Related terms: spaghettini
spaghettoni
noodle