spaghetti

Pluralspaghettis

Formsspaghettis, spaghettiing, spaghettied

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   Pasta made in long, thin, solid strands that are round in cross section.

   She boiled the spaghetti until it was tender, then drained it.

   Fresh spaghetti cooks faster than the dried kind from a box.

   Note

   Borrowed from Italian, where the word is already a plural: spaghetti is the plural of spaghetto, built from spago, 'cord, string', plus a diminutive suffix. The name therefore means roughly 'little strings'. English usually treats it as a mass noun (cook some spaghetti). Isabella Beeton, writing in 1888, still introduces it as a smaller kind of macaroni served with tomato sauce and Parmesan.

2. 2
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A prepared dish in which spaghetti is the main ingredient, such as spaghetti bolognese.

   The cafe's spaghetti arrived piled high with a rich tomato sauce.

   He finished his plate of spaghetti and asked for seconds.

3. 3
   nouncolloquialuncountablebefore a noun

   A tangle of long, thin material resembling pasta strands in look or texture.

   The server room was a spaghetti of network cables no one dared touch.

   She pulled a hopeless spaghetti of necklaces from the drawer.

   Similartangle, jumble, snarl, mess, web

   Note

   A word that most often works as a modifier, lending its image of long strands to another noun: spaghetti junction, spaghetti strap, spaghetti limbs, spaghetti stripes. As a noun it takes the frame a spaghetti of, as in Edwin Heathcote's 'spaghetti of cables, adaptors and plugs'. Straps and stripes borrow the pasta's shape, while cables and junctions borrow its tangle.

4. 4
   nouncolloquialuncountablebefore a noun

   A complex road junction where multiple routes interweave, especially a multilevel interchange on a highway.

   Commuters dread the spaghetti where three highways meet north of town.

   Engineers redesigned the spaghetti to ease the daily traffic jams.

   Similarinterchange, junction

   Note

   A transport image best seen from above: ramps and loops stacked on several levels until the plan looks like a plate of pasta. It also appears in the compound spaghetti junction. It is an informal name, suited to commuters' complaints and news reports rather than to engineering drawings, where the structure is simply an interchange.

5. 5
   nouncolloquialuncountablebefore a noun

   Insulating tubing or bundled wiring used in electrical equipment.

   Each solder joint was protected with a short length of spaghetti.

   The kit included colored spaghetti for labeling the wires.

   Similarsleeving, tubing

   Note

   Workshop slang for the thin insulating sleeving slipped over bare wire or terminals, and by extension for the wiring itself. It is a mass noun, so it comes in lengths and colors (a short length of spaghetti over each solder joint) rather than as 'a spaghetti'. The name comes from the tubing's shape, not from any tangle, unlike the road junction.

6. 6
   nouncolloquialfigurativelyuncountable

   A confusing or intricate situation, hard to untangle or make sense of.

   The company's approval process is a spaghetti of overlapping rules.

   Trying to follow the story, viewers got lost in a spaghetti of subplots.

   Similarmaze, tangle, labyrinth, web, morass

   Note

   The tangle moves from the physical to the abstract: population movements drawn as arrows on a map, a pop chart built from streams and downloads, a consolidated payments industry. It keeps the frame of the physical tangle, a spaghetti of something, and it readily takes an adjective, as in The Guardian's 'algorithmic spaghetti'. It suits systems whose many parts cross and overlap.

7. 7
   nounderogatorycolloquialfigurativelyuncountableabbreviationellipsis

   Ellipsis of spaghetti code.

   Maintaining the legacy system meant wading through years of spaghetti.

   The junior developer's first script was a tangle of spaghetti.

   Note

   Programmers' shorthand, and never a compliment. The full phrase is spaghetti code: source code with little or no structure, typically full of GOTO statements or their equivalent, so that the path of execution doubles back on itself. Calling a colleague's work spaghetti is a criticism. It is informal enough for a code review but too blunt for documentation.

8. 8
   nouncountable or uncountableabbreviationellipsis

   Ellipsis of spaghetti western.

   Note

   Film talk clips the genre name to its first word. A spaghetti is a Western made by an Italian-based company and shot in Europe, notably in Italy. The full phrase also appears capitalized, as Spaghetti Western. The clipped form works best once the genre is already in the conversation, because on its own the word reads first as the pasta.

9. 9
   nounderogatorycolloquialcountable or uncountable

   A derogatory term for an Italian person.

   Bigots in the old neighborhood sneered at the newcomers, branding each one a spaghetti.

   He grew up hearing strangers call his father a spaghetti.

   Note

   A slur, not a nickname. It reduces a person to a national dish, and it draws on the same Italian association as the clipped 'western'. Treat it as an insult in every context. It is worth knowing so you can recognize it, not so you can use it. When writing about the word, quote it rather than apply it to anyone.

10. 10
    verbcolloquialtransitive

    To cause something to become tangled or knotted.

    Careless packing can spaghetti the cables into one stubborn knot.

    The toddler spaghettied the ball of string in seconds.

    Similartangle, knot, snarl, entangle

    Oppositeuntangle, disentangle, unknot

    Note

    Mostly met as a past participle describing a state. Tom Robbins writes that 'Sissy's brow was spaghettied', and Jonathan Kellerman's ceiling is 'spaghettied by ductwork and ladders'. That passive frame, often with by or together, carries the verb in descriptive prose. There it paints lines crossing a surface rather than an action anyone performs.

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