Noodle

How to spell noodle

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce noodle

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does noodle mean?

1. nounA long, thin strip or string of pasta, usually made from wheat flour and eaten in soups or with sauce.
2. verbTo improvise casually or aimlessly on a musical instrument.
3. nounInformal term for a person's head or brain, often in the phrase 'use your noodle'.

Noodle in a sentence

• noun

  She added a single noodle to test whether the water was hot enough.

• verb

  He likes to noodle on the guitar while waiting for the band to arrive.

• noun

  The teacher told the class to use their noodle before guessing the answer.

• noun

  The soup contained one stray noodle floating at the top.

• verb

  She would noodle at the piano for hours without playing any real song.

• noun

  A quick puzzle in the morning gets the old noodle working.

Where does noodle come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Noodle came into English in the mid-1700s from the German word Nudel, which referred to a strip or string of pasta. The deeper origin of the German term is uncertain; some link it to an older word for a dumpling or paste, but the trail goes cold, so the earliest source is genuinely unclear. As the word settled into English it kept its plain food meaning and then sprouted slang lives: by the 1700s 'noodle' could mean a simpleton or a foolish person, and later, by extension, the head itself, as in 'use your noodle'. A separate informal verb sense, meaning to improvise idly on a musical instrument, grew up in the twentieth century. The spelling trap is simply the double 'o' and the silent-feeling '-le' ending, which mirror the sound rather than disguise it.

How the word is built

• noodle (single root, from German Nudel: a strip of pasta); the doubled 'oo' carries the long vowel sound