Did Macaroni Mean Fashionable?

A macaroni (or formerly maccaroni) in mid-18th-century England was a fashionable fellow who dressed and even spoke in an outlandishly affected and epicene manner. The term pejoratively referred to a man who "exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion" in terms of clothes, fastidious eating, and gambling.

What does macaroni mean?

1 : pasta made from semolina and shaped in the form of slender tubes. 2 plural macaronis or macaronies [Macaroni Club, a group of such Englishmen]

Is macaroni a derogatory term?

But it's more likely, especially given the date of the crime, that the “macaroni” in question was a later and sadly predictable use of the word in England as a derogatory slang term for anyone of Italian nationality or extraction.