Wet noodle
Encyclopedia
A wet noodle is a strip or string of pasta
that has become soft and flaccid after being soaked in water. The term is used in a number of non-literal ways, generally based on the visual image of spaghetti
noodle
s that are long and straight when dry, including:
Pasta
Pasta is a staple food of traditional Italian cuisine, now of worldwide renown. It takes the form of unleavened dough, made in Italy, mostly of durum wheat , water and sometimes eggs. Pasta comes in a variety of different shapes that serve for both decoration and to act as a carrier for the...
that has become soft and flaccid after being soaked in water. The term is used in a number of non-literal ways, generally based on the visual image of spaghetti
Spaghetti
Spaghetti is a long, thin, cylindrical pasta of Italian origin. Spaghetti is made of semolina or flour and water. Italian dried spaghetti is made from durum wheat semolina, but outside of Italy it may be made with other kinds of flour...
noodle
Noodle
The noodle is a type of food, made from any of a variety of doughs, formed into long thin ribbons, strips, curly-cues, waves, helices, pipes, tubes, strings, or other various shapes, sometimes folded. They are usually cooked in a mixture of boiling water and/or oil. Depending upon the type, noodles...
s that are long and straight when dry, including:
- Referring facetiously to a whipWhipA whip is a tool traditionally used by humans to exert control over animals or other people, through pain compliance or fear of pain, although in some activities whips can be used without use of pain, such as an additional pressure aid in dressage...
ping mechanism that is impractical and has no injurious or painful effects, to someone who is not any fun, to refer to something totally yielding and with no stiffness, or used metaphorically to demonstrate the difficulty of pushing something that can only be moved by pulling. - An example of unproductive action, as pushing on them from one end is not productive, as this will not move the noodle and has no effect at other end of the noodle (as opposed to pulling a noodle, which is effective). Patton is said to have used a wet noodle on a plate to demonstrate an aphorismAphorismAn aphorism is an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and memorable form.The term was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates...
on the need for leadership, saying "Gentlemen, you don't push the noodle, you pull it." - In snowshoeingSnowshoeA snowshoe is footwear for walking over the snow. Snowshoes work by distributing the weight of the person over a larger area so that the person's foot does not sink completely into the snow, a quality called "flotation"....
, a wet noodle-type binding is an "old standby" that is appropriate for gentle terrain. Also known as an H binding, it may have been nicknamed because it gets wet and slippery. - In model airplane design, the wet noodle theory refers to materials that are stronger in tension than in compression, thus they can be pulled on with more force than other materials, despite their higher risk of collapsing.