confetti

English

Etymology

Borrowed (possibly via French) from Italian confetti (literally “confections”), used to describe sugar-coated almonds, and by extension things imitating them (like pellets of plaster), which were thrown in Italy during festivities like Carnival and weddings.[1][2] (This practice is mentioned in English since at least the 1810s.[3][4]) The French and the English adopted the practice of celebrating weddings and other festivities by throwing such candies, or (by the late 1800s) tiny pieces of colored paper symbolizing them,[5][6][7] partially displacing their earlier practice of throwing rice.[2]

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /kənˈfɛti/
  • Rhymes: -ɛti

Noun

confetti (uncountable)

  1. Small pieces or strips (streamers) of colored paper or other material (metal, plaster, etc) generally thrown about at festive occasions, especially at weddings and in victory celebrations.
  2. (rare) Edible Italian sugar-coated almonds, especially those which are used as part of a traditional Italian wedding.
    • 1870, Henry T. Tuckerman, in the Boston Transcript, quoted in The New York Observer Yearbook and Almanac, page 143:
      [...] a pale and fair devotee of fashion who has left off eating confetti, and recovered her bloom.
    • 1959, Loren Wahl, Lorenzo Madalena, Confetti for Gino:
      "Why, if you and Teresa, our own best man and maid of honor . . . oh, how wonderful that would be, to eat confetti at your wedding!"
    • 1975, Garibaldi Marto Lapolla, The grand Gennaro, Ayer Co. Pub.:
      Emilio and Roberto had pooled their resources in money and had arranged with the cafe keeper for steaming thick chocolate, a slow-pouring syrup-like drink, the richest boccotoni, cream-filled heavy sfogliate, and almond confetti.
    • 1986, Anne Paolucci, Sepia tones: seven short stories, Council on Natl Literature (→ISBN):
      There were large trays with assorted pastries and colored almond confetti for a wedding, and he remembered with a pang that this very day was the wedding anniversary, the day Pino and Maria had married (so long ago!) in Rome.
    • For more examples of usage of this term, see Citations:confetti.

Usage notes
  • Very rarely, a single piece of confetti may be called a confetto, as in Italian.

Translations

References
  1. Giacomo Carnevale, Notizie storiche dell'antico e moderno Tortonese, raccolte da Conte G. Carnevale (1845), page 24 (a period Italian account of confetti-throwing during a wedding): I congiunti, e gli amici fanno loro corteggio, nel ritorno alla casa dalla Chiesa sono salutati da lieti evviva dai ragazzi ai quali vengano gettati dallo sposo confetti, nocciuoli, od amandole; ...
  2. The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, page 779 and Tim Richardson, Sweets: a history of candy, page 129
  3. “confetti” in Merriam–Webster Online Dictionary.
  4. “confetti” in Dictionary.com Unabridged, Dictionary.com, LLC, 1995–present.
  5. Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins (→ISBN) and The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (Elizabeth Knowles, 2006, →ISBN)
  6. “confetti” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2019.
  7. Christian Roy, Traditional Festivals: A Multicultural Encyclopedia, (2005, ABC-CLIO, →ISBN), page 53, says "In 1892, paper confetti were invented by an engineer from Modane in Savoy (ceded to France along with Nice in 1860), recycling paper used in raising silkworms, and replaced the heavy plaster confetti, the use of which was now limited to certain days and events." And Uit Parijs, Confetti, in the Dutch newspaperpaper Algemeen Handelsblad, 6 March 1892, records their use in Paris that year. Other references suggest paper confetti may have been devised as early as the 1870s.

French

Etymology

From Italian confetti (plural), reinterpreted as a singular (compare spaghetti). Doublet of confit. See English confetti for more.

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /kɔ̃.fe.ti/

Noun

confetti m (plural confettis)

  1. (chiefly in the plural) confetti

Further reading

Italian

Noun

confetti m pl

  1. plural of confetto

Verb

confetti

  1. second-person singular present indicative of confettare
  2. first-person singular present subjunctive of confettare
  3. second-person singular present subjunctive of confettare
  4. third-person singular present subjunctive of confettare
  5. third-person singular imperative of confettare

Anagrams

Spanish

Noun

confetti m (plural confettis)

  1. Misspelling of confeti.
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