spaghetti

plural spaghettis

1. countableuncountableusuallyA type of pasta made in the shape of long thin strings.

   Her mother was cooking spaghetti for dinner.

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   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.

   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: pasghetti, sketti, spag

   1. broadlycountableuncountableusuallyA dish that has spaghetti (noun 1 sense 1) as a main part of it, such as spaghetti bolognese.

      Synonyms: pasghetti, sketti, spag, spag

2. Denoting Italianness.
   1. broadlycountablederogatoryinformaluncountableusuallyAn Italian person.

      Synonyms: macaroni, pizzahead

   2. abbreviationbroadlycountableellipsisuncountableusuallybroadcastingEllipsis 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”).
3. attributivebroadlyinformaloftenuncountableusuallySomething physically resembling spaghetti (noun 1 sense 1) in appearance or consistency, or in being tangled.

   spaghetti grid    spaghetti junction    spaghetti limbs    spaghetti strap    spaghetti stripes

   2 more examples

   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?

   2015 October 30, Edwin Heathcote, “Design horrors: the bad, the ugly and the dysfunctional”, in Financial Times

   “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.”

   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

   1. attributivebroadlyinformaloftenuncountableusuallybusinessElectrical insulating tubing or electrical wiring.
   2. attributivebroadlyinformaloftenuncountableusuallyroadRoads forming a complex junction, especially one with multiple levels on a motorway.
   3. attributivebroadlyinformaloftenuncountableusually3D printingDisorderly strands of filament, caused by an error during the printing process.

      Coordinate term: blob of death

4. figurativelyinformaluncountableusuallySomething confusing or intricate.

   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.

   2017 May 23, Gavin Haynes, “Why BTS are the K-pop kings of social media”, in The Guardian

   2 more examples

   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.

   2014 February 10, Stephen Heyman, “A Literary Tour on the Blue Danube”, in The New York Times

   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.

   2023 March 16, Rupak Ghose, “Can payments eat the world?”, in Financial Times

   1. abbreviationderogatoryellipsisfigurativelyinformaluncountableusuallycomputingEllipsis of spaghetti code (“unstructured or poorly structured program source code, especially code with many GOTO statements or their equivalent”).

1. pluralrareplural of spaghetto

present singular third person spaghettis · participle present spaghettiing · participle past spaghettied · past spaghettied

1. humorousinformaltransitiveTo serve (someone) spaghetti (noun noun 1 sense 1).

   Visiting members expected to attend, and all will be properly spaghettied.

   1940 January 19, “Local and General Items”, in The Blairmore Enterprise, volume XXXI, number 3, Blairmore, Alta.: W. J. Bartlett, →OCLC, page 8, column 3

   1 more example

   Pi Phis spaghettied their mothers and fathers last Saturday evening in the rooms.

   1940 April 2, Helen Carstarphen, “Following the Socialites”, in The George Washington University Hatchet, volume 36, number 25, Washington, D.C.: Students of the George Washington University, →OCLC, page 3, column 2

2. informaltransitiveTo cause (someone or something) to become, or appear to become, longer and thinner; to stretch.

   He spaghettied the referee when he landed on him.

3. informaltransitiveTo cause (something) to become tangled.

   All these are spaghettied together, as the following boxscore will show: […]

   1914 March 7, “Bill” [pseudonym], “The Lame Duck: Views of an Innocent Bystander”, in The Saturday Evening Post, volume 186, number 56, Philadelphia, Pa.; London: Curtis Publishing Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 81, column 1

   2 more examples

   "What makes you think this watercolorist and I would develop a romantic relationship?" Sissy's brow was spaghettied.

   1976 April, Tom Robbins, chapter 20, in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (novel, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Company, →ISBN, page 64

   A twenty-foot ceiling was spaghettied by ductwork and ladders – not library rollers on rails, just foldable aluminium ladders – supplied for those willing to climb their way to erudition.

   2004 May, Jonathan Kellerman, chapter 33, in Therapy, New York, N.Y.: Ballantine Books, →ISBN, page 257

4. humorousinformalintransitiveTo eat spaghetti (noun noun 1 sense 1).

   I have "spaghettied" from Ventimiglia to Brindisi and I doubt if I have ever eaten as excellent spaghetti, certainly none better nor richer, than I have enjoyed in the home of a very charming Maryland hostess.

   1932, “Foreword”, in Frederick Philip Steiff, compiler, Eat, Drink & Be Merry in Maryland: An Anthology from a Great Tradition, New York, N.Y.: G[eorge] P[almer] Putnam’s Sons, →OCLC, page xvii

5. informalintransitiveTo become, or appear to become, longer and thinner.

   The oldest Lark spaghettied down to a noodle and slithered through the letterbox-like hole at the bottom of the cistern.

   2022 August 30, Thomas Sanders, Samuel Sanders, “Little K, Fire ’Er Up!”, in The Companionship in A Case of OCD, [United Kingdom]: Sanders Sound & Picture, page 361

6. informalintransitiveTo become tangled.

   The cables spaghettied onto the shoulder of the technician.

   5 more examples

   These elegant instrument pods will bring all the instruments within eye range of the most nearsighted skipper, keep his bulkhead intact and eliminate all those messy wires spaghettiing around.

   1977 November, Patty Slingluff, “Christmas Presents!”, in Murray Davis, editor, Cruising World, volume 3, number 11, Newport, R.I.: Cruising World Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 53, column 2

   [H]is instrument looked like a Rube Goldberg contraption. It was rigged from electronic bits and pieces, put together with wires that habitually spaghettied out of its grey metal box.

   1979, Thelma Moss, “Kirlian Beginnings: Being a Tale of Fortuitous Trial and Error, All the Way …”, in The Body Electric: A Personal Journey into the Mysteries of Parapsychological Research, Bioenergy, and Kirlian Photography, Los Angeles, Calif.: J. P. Tarcher; Don Mills, Ont.: Thomas Nelson & Sons, →ISBN, page 78

   Canada's cities are different from America's— […] There are no freeways spaghettiing their way through the town.

   1988 October 8, “Survival”, in The Economist (Canada Survey section), volume 309, number 7571, London: Economist Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 16, column 1

   These four problems, spaghettiing through our minds and bookshelves, make for crippling limitations of literary sensibility.

   2005, John Lennard, “Punctuation”, in The Poetry Handbook: A Guide to Reading Poetry for Pleasure and Practical Criticism, 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire; New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 108

   Call it what you will, but as soon as you think you've got your dish ready to serve, it spaghettis all over the place and you have to clean up the mess.

   2006, Richard E[sterhuysen] Grant, The Wah-Wah Diaries: The Making of a Film, London: Picador, →ISBN, page 11