/ˈnuːdəl/·noun·1779, in English print references to German pasta strips (OED first attestation)·Established
Origin
Borrowed from German Nudel in the late 18th century, 'noodle' tracesback through uncertain Germanic roots — possibly to 'knot' or 'pressed dough' — while its slang sense meaning 'head' appears to predate the food sense by a decade, suggesting two parallel words that may have always been one.
Definition
A strip or string of pasta made from unleavened dough of flour, water, and usually egg, typically boiled and served in soups or with sauce.
The Full Story
German18th centurywell-attested
The English word 'noodle' derives from German 'Nudel', a pasta or dumpling strip, first attested in German sources in the 18th century. The German term is of uncertain deeper origin, with several competing scholarly hypotheses. The most widelyaccepted etymology traces 'Nudel' to a variant of 'Knödel' (dumpling), diminutive of 'Knoten' (knot), from Middle High German 'knote', from Old High German 'knoto', meaning a knot or lump — cognate with English 'knot'. This traces to Proto-Germanic *knutaz and ultimately to PIE *gnod- meaning to press together
Did you know?
The 'head' meaning of noodle ('use your noodle') is actually recorded in English about a decade before the food sense — circa 1762 vs 1779. This has led some etymologists to argue the food word was named after the head word, on the logic that a noodle resembles a lumpy, elongated brain. Most scholars reject the idea, but the fact that the slang word is older than the pasta word has never been fully explained.
, attested from the 15th century). By the 19th and 20th centuries, 'noodle' in American English expanded to cover Asian pasta forms encountered through immigration, especially Chinese-style wheat or rice noodles. Scholarly sources including the OED and Kluge's Etymologisches Wörterbuch treat the food sense as a German borrowing, while Duden notes the knot-lump derivation as probable but not certain. Key roots: *gnod- (Proto-Indo-European: "to press together, to knot, to bind into a compressed form"), knoto (Old High German: "knot, lump, tied mass"), Nudel (German: "strip of pasta dough; dumpling").