soup strainer

• soup-strainer (particularly attributive use)

soup strainer (plural soup strainers)

1. A device or implement used as a strainer for soup.
   • 1884, Sarah Tyson Rorer, Mrs. Rorer's Philadelphia Cook Book: A Manual of Home Economies, page 544:

     In the drawers should be kept cooking knives and forks, larding and trussing needles, wooden spoons and forks; also jelly-bags, dish towels, linen soup-strainers, fish cloths, and a large piece of cheese-cloth that may be torn in convenient pieces as wanted; a roll of tape and a ball of linen twine for trussing.

   • 2004, Jiggs Kalra, Pushpesh Pant, Classic Cooking Of Punjab, Allied Publishers, page 40:

     Remove and pass through a fine mesh soup strainer into a separate handi/pan.

   • 2007, G. Gopal, Delicious Dishes (Vegetarian), Sura Books, page 77,

     When cool, pass the cooked mixture through a soup strainer.

2. (humorous) A moustache, particularly a handlebar moustache, that droops.
   • 1976, Matt Braun, Buck Colter, St. Martin's Press, page 26:

     Though tawny-skinned, he easily passed himself off as white, growing a thick soup-strainer of a mustache to complete the disguise of his pale gray eyes.

   • 2004, Ronald E. Yates, Finding Billy Battles, California Times Publishing, unnumbered page,

     Charley stroked his goatee and moustache. "I don't know. I got this here soup strainer and chin whiskers now, and I didn't in Tombstone. […] "

   • 2013, Jon Sharpe, The Trailsman, No. 376: New Mexico Madman, Penguin (New American Library, Signet), page 21,

     He was a thickset man with a huge soup-strainer mustache and a pockmarked face.