confetti
n. uncountablen. small pieces of coloured paper that people throw into the air during a celebration. You usually see this at weddings or parades.
n. small pieces of paper, often brightly coloured, thrown by onlookers at celebrations such as weddings or parades. Historically referred to sweets or plaster imitations thrown during Italian carnivals.
The guests threw colourful confetti as the couple left the church.
After the championship victory, the stadium was covered in a thick layer of gold and silver confetti.
The cleaning crew spent hours sweeping up the remains of the parade, as the wind had scattered the tiny circles of confetti into every crack of the pavement.
Borrowed (possibly via French) from Italian confetti (literally “confections”), used to describe sugar-coated almonds, and by extension things imitating them (like pellets of plaster), which were thrown in Italy during festivities like Carnival and weddings. (This practice is mentioned in English since at least the 1810s.) The French and the English adopted the practice of celebrating weddings and other festivities by throwing such candies, or (by the late 1800s) tiny pieces of colored paper symbolizing them, partially displacing their earlier practice of throwing rice.