macaronin.

Etymology: < Italian maccaroni, macaroni, obsolete or regional variants of maccheroni (15th cent.), plural of maccherone (14th cent.; 13th cent. in post-classical Latin (ablative plural) macaronis ; 11th cent. in Italian as Mackarone in isolated early use as a name for a foolish person); of uncertain origin. Compare French macaroni (1650; 1820 in sense 6), and the earlier macaroon n. With sense 2 compare monkeyrony n.Italian maccherone is perhaps < Byzantine Greek μακαρία barley-broth (only attested in Hesychius, and therefore possibly from a lost ancient Greek or Hellenistic Greek text) < ancient Greek μακάριος blessed (because originally a funeral or charitable meal); another suggested Greek etymology is < medieval Greek μακαρώνεια funeral chant (13th cent.) < ancient Greek μακάριος + αἰώνιος eternal (see aeonian adj.). maccherone is attested early in southern Italian use, and may have entered Italian or post-classical Latin from the Greek settlements in southern Italy (compare Italian macco , originally of similar meaning and perhaps of the same origin). The word appears earliest to have denoted a dumpling or gnocco , and only later pasta in tubular form: compare Folengo's gloss given s.v. macaronic adj., and the following gloss (compare also macaroon n. 1, 2):1611 J. Florio Queen Anna's New World of Words Maccaróni, a kind of meat made of round peeces of paste, boyled in water and put into a dish with butter, spice and grated-cheese vpon them. The etymology < Italian maccare to bruise favoured by many earlier scholars is now usually rejected on morphological grounds. The word is scarcely evidenced in English until the mid 18th cent.: compare note to sense 2.