spaghetti

noun

1. 1

   A type of pasta made in the shape of long thin strings.

   Her mother was cooking spaghetti for dinner.

   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.

2. 2

   A type of pasta made in the shape of long thin strings. A dish that has spaghetti (noun 1 sense 1) as a main part of it, such as spaghetti bolognese.

3. 3

   informalDenoting Italianness. An Italian person.

4. 4

   informalSomething 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

   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?

   “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.”

5. 5

   informalSomething physically resembling spaghetti (noun 1 sense 1) in appearance or consistency, or in being tangled. Electrical insulating tubing or electrical wiring.

6. 6

   informalSomething physically resembling spaghetti (noun 1 sense 1) in appearance or consistency, or in being tangled. Roads forming a complex junction, especially one with multiple levels on a motorway.

7. 7

   informalSomething physically resembling spaghetti (noun 1 sense 1) in appearance or consistency, or in being tangled. Disorderly strands of filament, caused by an error during the printing process.

   Coordinate term: blob of death

8. 8

   figurativeSomething confusing or intricate.

   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.

   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.

   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.

9. 9

   Variant of spaghetti westernDenoting 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”).

10. 10

    Variant of spaghetti codefigurativeSomething confusing or intricate. Ellipsis of spaghetti code (“unstructured or poorly structured program source code, especially code with many GOTO statements or their equivalent”).

noun

1. 1

   Also a form of spaghettorareplural of spaghetto

verb

1. 1

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

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

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

2. 2

   informalTo 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. 3

   informalTo cause (something) to become tangled.

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

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

   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.

4. 4

   informalTo 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.

5. 5

   informalTo 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.

6. 6

   informalTo become tangled.

   The cables spaghettied onto the shoulder of the technician.

   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.

   [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.

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

Forms

plural

spaghettis

past tense

spaghettied

past participle

spaghettied

present participle

spaghettiing

third person singular

spaghettis