alphabet soup
- noun
- /ˈælfəˌbɛt suːp/
:
sopa de letras
- On a chilly day, nothing warms you up like a bowl of alphabet soup with letters floating in the broth.
Examples
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For lunch, I ordered a hearty alphabet soup that the kids loved because they could spell words with the noodles.
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He could have instead said, "I'll have the alphabet soup."
Blog text (25) -
Mr. Johnson here says I'd like a bowl of hot alphabet soup (with a bit of politeness marking in the I'd like).
Blog text (25) -
After dinner, the children had a bowl of alphabet soup filled with noodles shaped like their favorite letters.
Synonyms
63
1.0
A thick mixture of things that looks like liquid
Surface Forms
Morphology
The image of 'alphabet' (letters) combined with 'soup' (a mixed, undifferentiated mixture) gives a clear cue that the phrase refers to a jumble or mixture of letter-like items, so learners can infer a general sense of confusion or clutter. However, the conventional extension to mean specifically a confusing mix of acronyms/abbreviations/jargon is metaphorical and lexicalized, so the precise referent may not be fully predictable without prior exposure.
Etymology
Alphabet soup comes from a real children's soup with small noodles shaped like the alphabet. Kids would spell words with the little letters as they ate, so today alphabet soup means a soup with letter-shaped noodles.