soup

• soop (obsolete)

• (UK) IPA^(key): /suːp/
• (US) enPR: so͞op, IPA^(key): /sup/

• Audio (RP)

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• Audio (GA)

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• Rhymes: -uːp

A bowl of soup

Wikiquote

The noun is from Middle English soupe, sowpe, from Old French soupe, souppe, sope, from Late Latin suppa (“sopped bread”), from Proto-Germanic *supô (compare Middle Dutch sope (“broth”)). Doublet of zuppa. See also sop and supper.

The verb is from the noun.[1]

soup (countable and uncountable, plural soups)

1. Any of various dishes commonly made by combining liquids, such as water or stock with other ingredients, such as meat and vegetables, that contribute flavor and texture.

   Pho is a traditional Vietnamese soup.

   • c. 1430 (reprinted 1888), Thomas Austin, ed., Two Fifteenth-century Cookery-books. Harleian ms. 279 (ab. 1430), & Harl. ms. 4016 (ab. 1450), with Extracts from Ashmole ms. 1429, Laud ms. 553, & Douce ms. 55 [Early English Text Society, Original Series; 91], London: N. Trübner & Co. for the Early English Text Society, volume I, OCLC 374760, page 11:

     Soupes dorye. — Take gode almaunde mylke […] caste þher-to Safroun an Salt […]

   1. (countable) A serving of such a dish, typically in a bowl.
   2. (uncountable) The liquid part of such a dish; the broth.
2. (figuratively) Any mixture or substance suggestive of soup consistency.
   • 2020 November 18, Drachinifel, 6:21 from the start, in The Salvage of Pearl Harbor Pt 2 - Up She Rises!‎, archived from the original on 22 October 2022:

     The cleanup job would turn out to be possibly second only to body-recovery duty in terms of being a job that nobody wanted to get assigned to. Imagine, for a moment, a thick soup of oil, paper, ink, clothing, raw meat and other fresh provisions, and worse, that had all been left to collect together in semi-warm water, all enclosed in a large metal container that had then been subjected to heating by first fire and then repeated warm Hawaiian days, and then left to ferment for over a month, and then with most of the water drained away and all the remaining solid and semi-liquid mass collecting together in pools and heaps across multiple decks, still in a relatively-enclosed environment.

   1. (slang) Thick fog or cloud (also pea soup).
   2. (US, slang) Nitroglycerine or gelignite, especially when used for safe-cracking.
   3. (cant) Dope or cocaine.
      • 1956, Allen Ginsberg, “Howl”, in Howl and Other Poems (Pocket Poets Series), City Lights Books, →OCLC, page 11:

        […] who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup […]

   4. (photography) Processing chemicals into which film is dipped, such as developer.
   5. (biology) A liquid or gelatinous substrate, especially the mixture of organic compounds that is believed to have played a role in the origin of life on Earth.

      primordial soup

   6. (UK, informal, often with "the") An unfortunate situation; trouble, problems (a fix, a mess); chaos.
      • 1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter I and X:

        B. Wickham had also the disposition and general outlook on life of a ticking bomb. In her society you always had the uneasy feeling that something was likely to go off at any moment with a pop. You never knew what she was going to do next or into what murky depths of soup she would carelessly plunge you. [...] “It may be fun for her,” I said with one of my bitter laughs, “but it isn't so diverting for the unfortunate toads beneath the harrow whom she plunges so ruthlessly in the soup.”

   7. (surfing) The foamy portion of a wave.

• supper

• → Tamil: சூப் (cūp)
• → Thai: ซุป (súp)

• porridge
• stew

soup (third-person singular simple present soups, present participle souping, simple past and past participle souped)

1. (uncommon) To feed: to provide with soup or a meal.
   • 1845, Charles Rowcroft, Tales of the Colonies: Or, The Adventures of an Emigrant, page 432:

     I'm blessed if I've heard about any thing but kangaroo-tail soup all the while I was at Launceston. They souped me there night and day.

   • 1896, Charles Reade, Readiana; Comments on Current Events, page 2:

     Now laughing together thaws our human ice; long before Swindon it was a talking match, —at Swindon who so devoted as Captain Dolignan,—he handed them out—he souped them,—he tough-chickened them,—he brandied and cochinealed one, and he brandied and burnt-sugared the other;

   • 1904 October, “East is East and West is West”, in The Vassar Miscellany, volume 34, number 1, page 236:

     "I was so mad, I let him wait half an hour to-night before I souped him."

   • 2011, Diza Sauers, Historama, page 152:

     She cooked huge stock pots and souped her dogs once a day.

   • 2008, C Mark Chapoton, A Tale of Two Iditarods, page 34:

     I souped the dogs, and went in for a bite. I ended up going back out and making my pups a full meal, then went back in and pigged out myself.

2. (photography) To develop (film) in a (chemical) developing solution.
   • 1970 December, The Rotarian, volume 117, number 6, page 31:

     That girl Vivienne, by the way, once worked as a secretary in the workshop of The Rotarian, began "souping" her own snapshots at home, went from there to top rank as a New York color photographer specializing in small children […]

   • 1991, Ruth Jean Dale, Society Page:

     "Then perhaps it won't surprise you to learn Annie's taking over the Sunday social column," Roz said. "You photo-guys'll be souping her film."

   • 1998, Edward Gorman, Cold Blue Midnight:

     And her camera position had been completely out of his sight. Satisfied that she'd gotten everything she'd needed - much more, in fact - she went back inside and got to work. Jill had souped her first photographs while she'd been on […]

   • 2005, Jock Lauterer, Community Journalism: A Personal Approach, page 242:

     By 6 pm Beau and I are back at the paper, souping the film, when Woody rushes into the room.

3. (obsolete) To proselytize by feeding the impoverished as long as they listen to one's preaching.
   • 1855, William Le Poer Trench, A Digest of the Evidence, Taken Before the Select Committee of the House of Lords, page 280:

     Was the priest who denounced those books of the National Board as "souping books" the patron of a national school?

   • 1864, Emily Bowles, Irish Diamonds, Or, A Chronicle of Peterstown, page 203:

     "Souping" in Peterstown came to an end, and Una had enough to do with her full school and ignorant scholars to deaden the sting of her grief for the time.

   • 1871, Thomas Curson Hansard, Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, page 1751:

     It was suggested that the briefs should be distributed generally; but they could not be spread as they were at Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds, where briefs where "souped" out.

   • 1877, Mary Hartley, The Hon. Miss Ferrard, page 101:

     Yes, and it was all done in pure charity, no souping swaddling mixture whatever. The Fitz-Ffoulkes had none of that about them .

   • 1887 January, “November in Kerry”, in Time: A Monthly Magazine, volume 5, page 36:

     Before long we passed a Scripture-reader (such the driver said he was), reading a book as a priest does his breviary. I though him not out of place; for anything madder than the whole system of "souping" it is hard to imagine. In Kerry you see signs of it here and there, as you do in Connemara.

   • 1891, Thomas Curson Hansard, Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, page 838:

     I ask, Sir, what right has the hon. Member to call any Protestant minister a souping parson?.

From Middle English soupen, from Old English sūpan (“to sup, sip”), from Proto-Germanic *sūpaną. More at sup.

soup (third-person singular simple present soups, present participle souping, simple past and past participle souped)

1. Alternative form of sup (“to sip; to take a small amount of food or drink into the mouth, especially with a spoon”).

From Middle English soupe, from Old English sūpe (“sup; draught”).

soup (plural soups)

1. Alternative form of sup (“a sip; a small amount of food or drink”).

From Middle English swopen, from Old English swāpan (“to sweep”), from Proto-Germanic *swaipaną (“to sweep”). More at sweep.

• soop

soup (third-person singular simple present soups, present participle souping, simple past and past participle souped)

1. (obsolete) To sweep.
   • 1597, Joseph Hall, Virgidemiarum:

     He vaunts his voice upon an hired stage, With high-set steps and princely carriage, Now souping in side robes of royalty.

   • 1598, John Marston, The Scourge of Villanie:

     Methinks I hear swart Martius cry, Souping along in war's fein'd maskerie, By Lais starrie front he'll forthwith die.

   • 1808, Joseph Hall, Josiah Pratt, “Quo Vadis? A Censure of Travel”, in Miscellaneous works, page 238:

     We can tell of those cheap-dieted men, that live about the head of Ganges, without meat, without mouths, feeding only upon air at their nostrils; or of those headless eastern people, that have their eyes in their breast; a mis-conceit arising from their fashion of attire, which I have sometimes seen; or those Coromandae, of whom Pliny speaks, that cover their whole body with their ears; or of the persecutors of St. Thomas of Canterbury, whose posterity, if we believe the confident writings of Degrassalius, are born with long and hairy tails, souping after them; which, I imagine, gave occasion to that proverbial jest, wherewith our mirth uses to upgraid the Kentish; or of Amazons; or Pigmies; or Satyrs;

From Middle English soupen, suppen, from Anglo-Norman super, from supe, soupe (“soup”) + -er (verb-forming suffix).

soup (third-person singular simple present soups, present participle souping, simple past and past participle souped)

1. Rare form of sup (“to take supper”).
   • a. 1618, Mark Napier, quoting James Melville, chapter III, in Memoirs of John Napier of Merchiston, His Lineage, Life, and Times, with a History of the Invention of Logarithms, Edinburgh: William Blackwood; London: Thomas Cadell, published 1834, page 116:

     When I cam that tym to the court, I fand my Lord Due of Orkney sitting at his supper. He said I had bene a gret stranger, desyring me to sit down and soup with him. The Erie of Huntly, the justice-clark, and dyvers uthers, wer sitten at the table with him. I said that I had already souped.

   • 1842 May 12, Thomas Moore, “1842⁠”, in Wilfred S. Dowden, Barbara G. Bartholomew, Joy L. Linsley, editors, The Journal of Thomas Moore, volumes 5 (1836–1842), Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press; London; Toronto, Ont.: Associated University Presses, published 1988, →ISBN, page 2245:

     Breakfasted with Rogers, who asked me to dine to-day and tomorrow—promised for both days—Most agreeably surprised by a note from my friend Tom Boyse, who is in London with his sister—Called upon them & found to my disappointment they were to be off again so soon as tomorrow—Offered myself for dinner to-day though with the fear of Rogers before my eyes, to whom I wrote to announce my defection and its cause—Only the Boyses themselves, young Carew (Lord Carew’s son) who souped with us, being obliged to set off immediately to the new Opera—[…]

   • 1904, H[ans] H[ermann] Behr, “Ethnology”, in The Hoot of the Owl, San Francisco, Calif.: A. M. Robertson, page 104:

     For weeks I had breakfasted, lunched, dined, and souped on mutton.

• Eric Partridge (2005) “soup”, in Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, editors, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, volumes 2 (J–Z), London, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 1820.
• Jonathon Green (2024) “soup n.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang

• POUs, PUOs, Pous, opus, pous, puso