Meaning & use
manicotti
Last updated
Meanings
nounusually plural
Large tube-shaped pasta filled with cheese or meat and baked with sauce.
Grammar: Usually plural in form, but often treated as a singular dish: manicotti is delicious.
Patterns
- manicotti with something
- make manicotti
- a plate of manicotti
We ordered manicotti stuffed with ricotta and spinach.
She baked a tray of manicotti for the family dinner.
Manicotti is my favorite pasta because the filling is so cheesy.
nouncountable
A single piece of this filled, tube-shaped pasta.
Grammar: Countable when you mean one piece: one manicotti, two manicotti.
Patterns
- a manicotti
- two manicotti
He ate one manicotti and then reached for another.
There are four manicotti left on the plate.
Common combinations
- manicotti stuffed with ricotta
- The menu lists manicotti stuffed with ricotta and herbs.
- baked manicotti
- Baked manicotti with tomato sauce is a Sunday favorite.
- a plate of manicotti
- He finished a whole plate of manicotti by himself.
- make manicotti from scratch
- It takes an hour to make manicotti from scratch.
Synonyms and how they differ
- cannelloni
- Almost the same pasta, but cannelloni is the name used more in Britain and is often filled with meat.
- ravioli
- Also filled pasta, but ravioli are small and square rather than large tubes.
Commonly confused: manicotti or cannelloni? manicotti or marinara?
manicotti vs cannelloni
Both are filled tube pasta, but manicotti is the usual American word and cannelloni the British one.
manicotti vs marinara
A sauce often served with manicotti, not the pasta itself; don't mix the two words up.
Practice
Choose the sentence that uses 'manicotti' correctly.
Choose one answer.
'Manicotti' is a plural-form pasta noun, so 'cooked manicotti' is correct. Option 0 wrongly adds -s, option 2 wrongly calls it a soup, and option 3 wrongly treats it as a drink.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “manicotti”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.