A Diet of Worms and Butterflies

" Vermicelli " is a very fine kind of spaghetti. Rather like the word " spaghetti " " vermicelli " can be divided into three main elements: the ending -" i " is a marker of " plural " (in Italian " vermicelli " is a plural word, so Italians say that the " vermicelli are ready ", etc.), "-ell " is a suffix which, like the "-ett -" of " spaghetti ", is associated with " smallness " or " delicacy " (the "-ic " which precedes it is merely an 'empty' element linking " -ell " to " verm- "). This leaves " verm -", and those who unsuspectingly tuck into a plate of vermicelli might be more hesitant to do so if they realized that " verm -" is from the Italian word " verme ", meaning " worm ".

" Vermicelli ", means, literally, " little worms ", and is so-called because of the worm-like shape of the pasta. " Vermicelli " seems to have been a perfectly normal way of saying " little worms " in Italian for several centuries, and the first recorded instance of the word in the sense of foodstuff dates from the mid seventeenth century (nowadays, a more common modern Italian diminutive of " worm " is " vermiciattolo ").

Resemblances in shape are behind a number of other pasta names: " lancette " are lance-shaped or spear-shaped and the word is made up of " lancia " " lance " + diminutive " -ett " + the feminine plural ending " -e "(by the way, the same word can mean " hands of a clock " in Italian). " Fusilli " are shaped like little spindles and the word comes from fuso " spindle " + diminutive suffix " -ill " (a southern Italian dialect variant of the " -ell " that appears in " vermicelli ") + plural -" i ". There is also farfalle, literally " butterflies ", used to describe a butterfly-shaped pasta (the same resemblance in shape is behind the use, in Italian, of " farfalla " to mean a " bow-tie ").

Few cuisines are as imaginative and based on such a wide variety of diminutive objects as Italian.