Word.ws English Dictionary

carbonara

/ˌkɑːbəˈnɑːɹə/US/ˌkɑɹbəˈnɑɹə/

carbonara noun: a thick Italian pasta sauce, made with guanciale, grated cheese, beaten egg yolks and pepper.

carbonara: a thick Italian pasta sauce, made with guanciale, grated cheese, beaten egg yolks and pepper
Image: Javier Somoza, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

carbonara (countable and uncountable, plural carbonaras)

  1. A thick Italian pasta sauce, made with guanciale, grated cheese, beaten egg yolks and pepper.
    • One of my own grand carbonaras, some crisp and spicy greens, a clean Tuscan white, a pint of raspberry sorbet, a pot of freshly ground strong coffee, and a long beguiling night on my couch in pajamas with cannabis, good TV, and no qualms about the future, please.1999, Roger D. Skillings, Where the Time Goes, page 10
  2. (broadly) A spaghetti dish made using such a sauce.
  3. (broadly, proscribed, sometimes) A spaghetti dish made using a similar sauce made from a different type of cured pork than guanciale (such as bacon, pancetta, lardons, gammon or ham).

Proper noun capitalized: Carbonara

Carbonara (plural Carbonaras)

  1. A surname from Italian.

carbonara meaning in Arabic and Indonesian

carbonara in Arabic

spaghetti dish
كَارْبُونَارَا kārbunāra

carbonara in Indonesian

spaghetti dish
karbonara

Forms of carbonara

Noun
pluralcarbonaras
Proper noun
pluralCarbonaras

Origin of carbonara

From the Italian carbonara, shortening of alla carbonara (literally “in the manner of charcoal burners”, or “in the manner of the Carbonari”), ultimately from carbone (“coal”).

Borrowed from Italian Carbonara.

Words that rhyme with carbonara

4 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about carbonara

What does carbonara mean?
Carbonara means a thick Italian pasta sauce, made with guanciale, grated cheese, beaten egg yolks and pepper.
What is carbonara in Arabic?
Carbonara in Arabic is كَارْبُونَارَا (kārbunāra). See Carbonara meaning in Arabic.
What part of speech is carbonara?
Carbonara can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce carbonara?
Carbonara is pronounced /ˌkɑːbəˈnɑːɹə/ (UK).
What is the plural of carbonara?
The plural of carbonara is carbonaras.

Words near carbonara in the dictionary

  1. carbonadoes
  2. carbonadoing
  3. carbonados
  4. carbonamide
  5. carbonamides
  6. carbonara
  7. carbonaras
  8. carbonari
  9. Carbonarism
  10. Carbonarist
  11. Carbonarists

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: carbonara (page history and authors); Carbonara (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-carbonara.wav.

Cite this entry: “carbonara.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/carbonara. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.