Why did Yankee Doodle name the feather in his hat Macaroni?

Question

i seem to think he was smoking something at the time....

Answer 1

He did it because he thought it made his hat look fashionable. The idea of the line in the song is that he was making a fool of those people who tried so hard to look fashionable and spoke in an outlandish manner (sounds like Valley Girls to me). By simply putting a feather in his hat and calling that macaroni he was claiming that being stylish wasn't important and could be done with a simple gesture. The intent behind the lyric is to make fun of British nobility who were well known for trying to be Macaroni.

A dandy is a type of person who wants to be Macaroni (just like those who shop on Rodeo Drive).

According to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaroni_%28fashion%29
"A macaroni, in mid-18th-century England, was a fashionable fellow who dressed and even spoke in an outlandishly affected manner. The term pejoratively referred to a person who exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion in terms of clothes, fastidious eating and gambling. Like a practitioner of macaronic verse, which mixed together English and Latin to comic effect, he mixed Continental affectations with his English nature, laying himself open to satire."

Answer 2

A "macaroni", in mid-18th-century England, was a dandyish young man with affected Continental mannerisms; the joke being that the Yankees believed that a feather in the hat was sufficient to make them the height of fashion.

Answer 3

A macaroni, in mid-18th-century England, was a fashionable fellow who dressed and even spoke in an outlandishly affected manner. The term pejoratively referred to a person who exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion in terms of clothes, fastidious eating and gambling. Like a practitioner of macaronic verse, which mixed together English and Latin to comic effect, he mixed Continental affectations with his English nature, laying himself open to satire.

Answer 4

maybe the feather was orange, and he thought oh id like macaroni right now, he was probably hungry. riding a poney into town is a lot of work

Answer 5

I always thought he named the pony Macaroni.

Answer 6

It rhymes better with Pony than Spaghetti does. Yeah he was smoking something of the wild grass.

Answer 7

i cant remember his name, but the guy who played Arilss on the show had a special on HBO and he was talking about all different things in history and he talked about this...
The Macaroni Club was a club for...lets say flamboyant men...the song is making fun of americans, saying we are pansies....

Answer 8

The guy in this NPR clip claims to have the answer. I haven't listened to it, but I think I will. You have me curious about it now!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4970266

Just click the Listen button.

Answer 9

The feather in his cap was a galah.

Answer 10

Because Kraft Dinner wasn't invented back then.