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pasta

UK/ˈpæs.tə/US/ˈpɑ.stə/
nounA2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,028 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: pastas

Pasta is the Italian food of boiled dough shapes with sauce. Cook the pasta, fresh pasta, pasta and sauce.

The shape is not decoration: ridged and hollow shapes hold thick sauces and long thin ones suit oil, which is why Italian recipes name a shape and mean it. Cooking water is starchy and is used to bind the sauce. Note that the Latin pasta means dough or paste.

David Adam Kess · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of pasta

  1. 1nounpastaItalian food of boiled dough shapes.A2+

    “Boil the pasta for ten minutes, then drain it.”

pasta is a food.

Also accepted in games: spaghetti, noodles

Where it comes from

Italian pasta comes from Latin pasta, dough or paste, from Greek paste, barley porridge. Paste and pastry come from the same dough.

  1. Italian

    pasta

  2. English, today

    pasta

Built from

  • παστός · Ancient Greek — sprinkled with salt

Borrowed from Italian pasta. Borrowed from Italian pasta (“paste; pasta, noodles”), from Latin pasta (“dough, pastry cake, paste”), from Ancient Greek παστά (“barley porridge”), neuter plural of παστός (“sprinkled with salt”), from Ancient Greek πάσσω (“to sprinkle”). a doublet of paste.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Food & Drink

Practise this word

pasta in the wild

  • The pasta is usually white because refined flour is used, but whole wheat flour may be added.

    Spaghetti

  • Carbonara is a pasta dish made with cured pork, hard cheese, eggs, salt, and black pepper.

    Carbonara

  • Spaghetti is the most common pasta, but bucatini or rigatoni are also used.

    Carbonara

  • Penne are an extruded type of pasta in the shape of tubular pieces with ends cut at an angle.

    Penne

  • The name orzo is common for this pasta shape in North America, but less so in Italy, where the word usually means 'barley'.

    Orzo

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the pasta family

pastapastry

pasta — used about once every 781 pages · #4,028 · point at the bar for the others