soup

plural soups · alternative obsolete soop

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

   Pho is a traditional Vietnamese soup.

   1 more example

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

   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

   1. countableA serving of such a dish, typically in a bowl.
   2. uncountableThe liquid part of such a dish; the broth.
2. countablefigurativelyuncountableAny mixture or substance suggestive of soup consistency.

   1 more example

   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.

   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 Oct 2022

   1. countablefigurativelyslanguncountableThick fog or cloud (also pea soup).
   2. UScountablefigurativelyslanguncountableNitroglycerine or gelignite, especially when used for safe-cracking.
   3. countablefigurativelyuncountablecantDope or cocaine.

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

      1956, Allen Ginsberg, “Howl”, in Howl and Other Poems (Pocket Poets Series), City Lights Books, →OCLC, page 11

   4. countablefigurativelyuncountableartsProcessing chemicals into which film is dipped, such as developer.
   5. countablefigurativelyuncountablebiologyA 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. UKcountablefigurativelyinformaloftenuncountablewith definite articleAn unfortunate situation; trouble, problems (a fix, a mess); chaos.

      1 more example

      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.”

      1960, P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing, chapter I and X

   7. countablefigurativelyuncountablehobbiesThe foamy portion of a wave.
   8. countablefigurativelyuncountablecellular automataAny random starting pattern, typically studied to see what sorts of resultant more stable patterns emerge when evolved over subsequent generations.

present singular third person soups · participle present souping · participle past souped · past souped · alternative obsolete soop

1. uncommonTo feed: to provide with soup or a meal.

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

   2011, Diza Sauers, Historama, page 152

   4 more examples

   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.

   1845, Charles Rowcroft, Tales of the Colonies: Or, The Adventures of an Emigrant, page 432

   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;

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

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

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

   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.

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

2. artsTo develop (film) in a (chemical) developing solution.

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

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

   3 more examples

   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 […]

   1970 December, The Rotarian, volume 117, number 6, page 31

   "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."

   1991, Ruth Jean Dale, Society Page

   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 […]

   1998, Edward Gorman, Cold Blue Midnight

3. obsoleteTo proselytize by feeding the impoverished as long as they listen to one's preaching.

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

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

   5 more examples

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

   1855, William Le Poer Trench, A Digest of the Evidence, Taken Before the Select Committee of the House of Lords, page 280

   "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.

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

   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.

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

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

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

   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.

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

present singular third person soups · participle present souping · participle past souped · past souped · alternative obsolete soop

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

plural soups · alternative obsolete soop

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

present singular third person soups · participle present souping · participle past souped · past souped · alternative soop · alternative obsolete soop

1. obsoleteTo sweep.

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

   1598, John Marston, The Scourge of Villanie

   2 more examples

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

   1597, Joseph Hall, Virgidemiarum

   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;

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

present singular third person soups · participle present souping · participle past souped · past souped · alternative obsolete soop

1. rareRare form of sup (“to take supper”).

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

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

   2 more examples

   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.

   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

   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—[…]

   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