A macaroni (formerly spelled maccaroni) was a pejorative term used to describe a fashionable fellow of mid-18th-century

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Stereotypically, men in the macaroni

subculture A subculture is a group of people within a culture that differentiates itself from the parent culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures develop their own norms and values regarding cultural, poli ...

dressed, spoke, and behaved in an unusually sentimental and

androgynous Androgyny is the possession of both masculine and feminine characteristics. Androgyny may be expressed with regard to biological sex, gender identity, or gender expression. When ''androgyny'' refers to mixed biological sex characteristics i ...

manner. The term "macaroni" pejoratively referred to a man who "exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion" in terms of high-end clothing, fastidious eating, and

gambling Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of value ("the stakes") on a random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy are discounted. Gambling thus requires three el ...

. He mixed Continental affectations with his English nature, like a practitioner of macaronic verse (which mixed English and Latin to comic effect), laying himself open to satire. The macaronis became seen in

stereotype In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for example ...

d terms by the English

aristocracy Aristocracy (, ) is a form of government that places strength in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocracy (class), aristocrats. The term derives from the el, αριστοκρατία (), meaning 'rule of the best'. At t ...

, being seen as a symbol of inappropriate

bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They ...

excess,

effeminacy Effeminacy is the embodiment of traits and/or expressions in those who are not of the female sex (e.g. boys and men) that are often associated with what is generally perceived to be feminine behaviours, mannerisms, styles, or gender roles, rathe ...

, and possible

homosexuality Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...

, which was then legally viewed as

sodomy Sodomy () or buggery (British English) is generally anal or oral sex between people, or sexual activity between a person and a non-human animal ( bestiality), but it may also mean any non- procreative sexual activity. Originally, the term ''sodo ...

. Many modern critics view the macaroni as representing a general change in 18th century English society such as political change,

class consciousness In Marxism, class consciousness is the set of beliefs that a person holds regarding their social class or economic rank in society, the structure of their class, and their class interests. According to Karl Marx, it is an awareness that is key to ...

, new

nationalism Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...

commodification Within a capitalist economic system, commodification is the transformation of things such as goods, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals into objects of trade or commodities.For animals"United Nations Commodity Trad ...

and

consumer capitalism A consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or uses purchased goods, products, or Service (economics), services primarily for personal, social, family, household and similar needs, who is not directly related to entrepreneurial or bu ...

. The macaroni was the Georgian-era precursor to the

dandy A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance. A dandy could be a self-made man who strove to imitate an aristocratic lifestyle desp ...

of the

Regency A regent (from Latin : ruling, governing) is a person appointed to govern a state '' pro tempore'' (Latin: 'for the time being') because the monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge the powers and duties of the monarchy ...

and Victorian eras.

Origins and etymology

In the 18th century, wealthy young British men traditionally took a trip around Europe upon their

coming of age Coming of age is a young person's transition from being a child to being an adult. The specific age at which this transition takes place varies between societies, as does the nature of the change. It can be a simple legal convention or can b ...

, known as his

Grand Tour The Grand Tour was the principally 17th- to early 19th-century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, with Italy as a key destination, undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank (typically accompanied by a tuto ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

was a key destination of these tours. During their trip, many developed a taste for ''

maccaroni A macaroni (formerly spelled maccaroni) was a pejorative term used to describe a fashionable fellow of mid-18th-century England. Stereotypically, men in the macaroni subculture dressed, spoke, and behaved in an unusually sentimental and andr ...

'', a type of

pasta Pasta (, ; ) is a type of food typically made from an unleavened dough of wheat flour mixed with water or eggs, and formed into sheets or other shapes, then cooked by boiling or baking. Rice flour, or legumes such as beans or lentils, are som ...

little known in England then, and so they were said to belong to the ''Macaroni Club''. They would refer to anything that was fashionable or ''à la mode'' as "very maccaroni". Author

Horace Walpole Horatio Walpole (), 4th Earl of Orford (24 September 1717 – 2 March 1797), better known as Horace Walpole, was an English writer, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian, and Whigs (British political party), Whig politician. He had Strawb ...

wrote to a friend in 1764 of "the Macaroni Club /nowiki>Almack's.html" ;"title="Almack's.html" ;"title="/nowiki>Almack's">/nowiki>Almack's">Almack's.html" ;"title="/nowiki>Almack's">/nowiki>Almack's/nowiki>, which is composed of all the travelled young men who wear long curls and spying-glasses". The expression was particularly used to characterize "fops" who dressed in high fashion with tall, powdered Wig (hair), wigs with a chapeau, chapeau bras on top that could only be removed on the point of a sword. The shop of engravers and printsellers

Mary and Matthew Darly Mary and Matthew Darly were English printsellers and caricaturists during the 1770s. Mary Darly (fl. 1756–1779) was a printseller, caricaturist, artist, engraver, writer, and teacher. She wrote, illustrated, and published the first book ...

in the fashionable

West End of London The West End of London (commonly referred to as the West End) is a district of Central London, west of the City of London and north of the River Thames, in which many of the city's major tourist attractions, shops, businesses, government buil ...

sold their sets of satirical "macaroni" caricature prints, published between 1771 and 1773. The new Darly shop became known as "the Macaroni Print-Shop". Design historian Peter McNeil links macaroni fashion to the

crossdressing Cross-dressing is the act of wearing clothes usually worn by a different gender. From as early as pre-modern history, cross-dressing has been practiced in order to disguise, comfort, entertain, and self-express oneself. Cross-dressing has play ...

of the earlier molly subculture, and says "some macaronis may have utilized aspects of high fashion in order to affect new class identities, but others may have asserted what we would now label a

queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the lat ...

identity". The Italian term ''maccherone'', when figuratively meaning "blockhead, fool", was apparently not related to this British usage, though both were derived from the name of the pasta shape.

Examples of usage

In 1773,

James Boswell James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck (; 29 October 1740 (New Style, N.S.) – 19 May 1795), was a Scottish biographer, diarist, and lawyer, born in Edinburgh. He is best known for his biography of his friend and older contemporary the Englis ...

was on tour in Scotland with the stout and serious-minded essayist and lexicographer Dr.

Samuel Johnson Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...

, the least dandified of Londoners. Johnson was awkward in the saddle, and Boswell ribbed him: "You are a delicate Londoner; you are a maccaroni; you can't ride." In

Oliver Goldsmith Oliver Goldsmith (10 November 1728 – 4 April 1774) was an Anglo-Irish novelist, playwright, dramatist and poet, who is best known for his novel ''The Vicar of Wakefield'' (1766), his pastoral poem ''The Deserted Village'' (1770), and his pl ...

's ''

She Stoops to Conquer ''She Stoops to Conquer'' is a comedy by Oliver Goldsmith, first performed in London in 1773. The play is a favourite for study by English literature and theatre classes in the English-speaking world. It is one of the few plays from the 18th ...

'' (1773), a misunderstanding is discovered and young Marlow finds that he has been mistaken; he cries out, "So then, all's out, and I have been damnably imposed on. O, confound my stupid head, I shall be laughed at over the whole town. I shall be stuck up in caricatura in all the print-shops. The Dullissimo Maccaroni. To mistake this house of all others for an inn, and my father's old friend for an innkeeper!" The song "

Yankee Doodle "Yankee Doodle" is a traditional song and nursery rhyme, the early versions of which predate the Seven Years' War and American Revolution. It is often sung patriotically in the United States today. It is the state anthem of Connecticut. Its ...

" from the time of the

American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was a major war of the American Revolution. Widely considered as the war that secured the independence of t ...

mentions a man who "stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni." Dr. Richard Shuckburgh was a British surgeon and also the author of the song's lyrics; the joke which he was making was that the

Yankee The term ''Yankee'' and its contracted form ''Yank'' have several interrelated meanings, all referring to people from the United States. Its various senses depend on the context, and may refer to New Englanders, residents of the Northern United St ...

s were naive and unsophisticated enough to believe that a feather in the hat was a sufficient mark of a macaroni. Whether or not these were alternative lyrics sung in the British army, they were enthusiastically taken up by the Americans themselves.See Yankee Doodle variations and parodies. Macaroni_(js)1

The

macaroni penguin The macaroni penguin (''Eudyptes chrysolophus'') is a species of penguin found from the Subantarctic to the Antarctic Peninsula. One of six species of crested penguin, it is very closely related to the royal penguin, and some authorities conside ...

was probably given this name because of its prominent crests.

Notes

{{reflist, colwidth=30em

References

Rictor Norton Rictor Norton (born 1945) is an American writer on literary and cultural history, particularly queer history. He is based in London, England. Biography Norton was born in Friendship, New York, USA, on June 25, 1945. He gained a BA from Flo ...

"The Macaroni Club: Homosexual Scandals in 1772"
in ''Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook''

Exhibition, 2003. * ttp://publicdomainreview.org/2017/02/22/a-queer-taste-for-macaroni/A Queer Taste for Macaroni 1760s fashion 1770s fashion History of clothing (Western fashion) Human appearance English clothing Terms for men Effeminacy

Origins and etymology

Examples of usage

See also

Notes

References