pasta (n.)

a generic name for Italian dough-based foods such as spaghetti, macaroni, etc., 1874, but not common in English until after World War II, from Italian pasta, from Late Latin pasta "dough, pastry cake, paste," from Greek pasta "barley porridge," probably originally "a salted mess of food," from neuter plural of pastos (adj.) "sprinkled, salted," from passein "to sprinkle," from PIE root *kwet- "to shake" (see quash).