Noodles are a type of food typically made from unleavened dough which is rolled flat and cut, stretched, or extruded into long strips or strings. Noodles are a staple food in many cultures and made into a variety of shapes. The most common noodles are those derived from either Chinese cuisine or Italian cuisine. Italian noodles are known as pasta, while Chinese noodles are known by a variety of different names as there is no single unifying concept or terminology for "noodles" within Chinese culture. Additionally, many Chinese foods labeled as "noodles" in the English language are not made from dough but are called "noodles" because they serve a similar culinary role to dough-based noodles.

While long, thin strips may be the most common, many varieties of noodles are cut into waves, helices, tubes, strings, or shells, or folded over, or cut into other shapes. Noodles are usually cooked in boiling water, sometimes with cooking oil or salt added. They can also be steamed, pan-fried, deep-fried, or baked. Noodles are often served with an accompanying sauce or in a soup, the latter being known as noodle soup. Noodles can be refrigerated for short-term storage or dried and stored for future use.

The word for noodles in English was borrowed in the 18th century from the German word Nudel (German: [ˈnuːdl̩] ^ⓘ). The German word likely came from Knodel or Nutel, and referred to any dumpling, though mostly of wheat.

Colloquial uses for noodle to refer to someone's head, or to a "dummy" are unrelated, and likely came from the older English word noddle.

The earliest written record of noodles is found in a book dated to the Eastern Han period (25–220 CE), and describes a noodle soup dish called "tang bing". Noodles made from wheat dough became a prominent food for the people of the Han dynasty. The oldest evidence of noodles was from 4,000 years ago in China. In 2005, a team of archaeologists reported finding an earthenware bowl that contained 4,000-year-old noodles at the Lajia archaeological site, made by the Qijia culture. These noodles were said to resemble lamian, a type of Chinese noodle. Analyzing the husk phytoliths and starch grains present in the sediment associated with the noodles, they were identified as millet belonging to Panicum miliaceum and Setaria italica. However, other researchers cast doubt that Lajia's noodles were made from specifically millet: it is difficult to make pure millet noodles, it is unclear whether the analyzed residue were directly derived from Lajia's noodles themselves, starch morphology after cooking shows distinctive alterations that does not fit with Lajia's noodles, and it is uncertain whether the starch-like grains from Laijia's noodles are starch as they show some non-starch characteristics.

The general consensus among food historians is that pasta originated somewhere in the Mediterranean region: a homogenous mixture of flour and water called itrion was described by 2nd-century Greek physician Galen, among 3rd to 5th-century Jews itrium was described by the Jerusalem Talmud and itriyya (Arabic cognate of the Greek word), referred to string-like shapes made of semolina and dried before cooking - as defined by the 9th-century physician and lexicographer Isho bar Ali.

There are over 1,200 types of noodles commonly consumed in China today. They vary widely according to the region of production, ingredients, shape or width, and manner of preparation. Due to the vast diversity of Chinese noodles, there is no single Chinese word equivalent to the Western concept of "noodles," nor is the notion of "noodles" as a unified food category recognized within Chinese cuisine.

In Standard Mandarin, miàn (simplified Chinese: 面; traditional Chinese: 麵) means "dough" but can be used to refer to noodles made from wheat flour and grains such as millet, sorghum, and oats. Similarly, fěn (粉) means "powder" but can be used to refer to noodles made from other starches, particularly rice flour and mung bean starch.