Skip to content

pasta

pasta

noun PAH-stah Rare
Food & Drink Dishes

Origin: From Late Latin pasta ('dough'), from Greek pastē ('barley porridge').

Also means

dough, pastry

Usage Note

Pasta in Italian covers both the generic food category and a specific serving of pasta. It also means 'dough' or 'pastry' in a baking context, and informally describes someone's character: una brava pasta di persona means 'a good-natured person.' The plural paste refers to individual pastries or pasta shapes. Pasta asciutta is dry pasta with sauce, as opposed to pasta in broth.

Examples

"Mangio la pasta ogni domenica."

Natural Translation

I eat pasta every Sunday.

Free starter pack

Building your Italian vocabulary?

Get the 100 most common Italian words as a free PDF — one email, no spam.

Explore Italian by topic