Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of or containing a mixture of vernacular words with Latin words or with vernacular words given Latinate endings.
  • adjective Of or involving a mixture of two or more languages.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Of or pertaining to the food macaroni.
  • Pertaining to or like a macaroni or fop; hence, trifling; vain; affected.
  • In lit., using, or characterized by the use of, many strange, distorted, or foreign words or forms, with little regard to syntax, yet with sufficient analogy to common words and constructions to be or seem intelligible: as, a macaronic poet; macaronic verse. Specifically, macaronic verse or poetry is a kind of burlesque verse in which words of another language are mingled with Latin words, or are made to figure with Latin terminations and in Latin constructions.
  • noun A confused heap or mixture of several things.
  • noun Macaronic verse.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A heap of things confusedly mixed together; a jumble.
  • noun A kind of burlesque composition, in which the vernacular words of one or more modern languages are intermixed with genuine Latin words, and with hybrid formed by adding Latin terminations to other roots.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective archaic jumbled, mixed
  • adjective literature Written in a hodgepodge mixture of two or more languages.
  • noun literature A work of macaronic character.
  • noun linguistics A word consisting of a mix of words of two or more languages, one of which is Latin, or a non-Latin stem with a Latin ending.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective of or containing a mixture of Latin words and vernacular words jumbled together

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[French macaronique, or Latin macaronicus, after Macaronea, title of a poem by Tifi Odasi (c.1450–1492), 15th-century Italian author, that contained such verse and satirized those who used poor Latin and affectedly Latinized Italian, from Italian maccherone, macaroni (considered food for peasants); see macaroni.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From New Latin, 1517 coinage, macaronicus, from Italian (Neapolitan dialect) maccarone ("coarse dumpling").

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Examples

  • It was what is called a macaronic poempart English, part Latinand was an elegy on the death of somebody or other.

    As I Please 1947

  • Vittorio Vettori (d. 1763), and Folengo, the first of the so-called macaronic writers; the jurist Piacentino (twelfth century),

    The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 9: Laprade-Mass Liturgy 1840-1916 1913

  • Parceque librum non a rendu "is the kind of macaronic French and Latin which schoolboys are accustomed to write under a sketch of the borrower expiating his offences on the gallows.

    Lost Leaders Andrew Lang 1878

  • If the macaronic inclusion of ecclesiastical Latin is too sober for your holiday, you can always set the Wayback Machine to last year's wassails.

    Archive 2008-12-01 Matthew Guerrieri 2008

  • If the macaronic inclusion of ecclesiastical Latin is too sober for your holiday, you can always set the Wayback Machine to last year's wassails.

    Drede ye nought, sayd the aungell bryght Matthew Guerrieri 2008

  • In the course of the conversation one of the PT crew composed a two-stanza poem in macaronic style, in which the lines of the poem are in different languages but the meter and rhyme scheme are preserved through the language shifts.

    Waaay off topic - The Panda's Thumb 2009

  • I cannot express in words how disspointed I was to find that “macaronic” did not refer to poetry sung to the tune of “Macarena”

    Waaay off topic - The Panda's Thumb 2009

  • I cannot express in words how disspointed I was to find that “macaronic” did not refer to poetry sung to the tune of “Macarena”

    Waaay off topic - The Panda's Thumb 2009

  • The concept of a macaronic verse was new for me as well as for Matt.

    Waaay off topic - The Panda's Thumb 2009

  • Richard, if you wish to post my macaronic exercise, I have no objections whatsoever, with an understanding that I have no claim of its being a good poetry.

    Waaay off topic - The Panda's Thumb 2009

Comments

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  • JM is contemplating macaronic caseus

    March 13, 2009