Why Did Yankee Doodle Call a Feather Macaroni?

Back in the 1760s, macaroni was slang for the stylish young men who frequented a fashionable new English hangout, the Macaroni Club, named after a popular food that had just made its way there from Italy. So when Yankee Doodle stuck a feather in his cap and called it macaroni, he was identifying himself as a bit of a dandy—essentially the hipster of his time.