 Today we sing Yankee Doodle, and we're proud to sing it. But originally, the British sang it to make fun of the colonists. They loved to mock what they called the shabby American troops. For example, a doodle is another word for a nitwit, not very complimentary. And when that Yankee Doodle stuck the feather in his hat and called it macaroni, macaroni was a slang for a young man all dressed up with nowhere special to go. So what happened? The patriots embraced the song.