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Glite Dictionary
to soup up

to soup up

4 6.4
Make a car or motorcycle run faster and work better
  • phrasal verb
  • /suːp ʌp/
  • Informal
translation icon : modificar
  • The mechanic offered to soup up the old truck, making it faster and more powerful.
  • souped-up car
  • souped-up version
  • souped-up engine

So it would be based off of the Mustang, but they would come in and completely soup it up.

Examples

  • You souped this thing up yourself?

    Getaway (2013)

  • He's got it souped up or something.

    Jeepers Creepers (2001)

  • Many of the cars are souped up.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • He's got some souped-up diesel.

    Duel (1971)

  • She drives around in a souped-up Mustang convertible.

    What Lies Beneath (2000)

  • At a monster-truck car-crushing competition I went to—an event where souped-up pickup trucks with tires six feet across try to crush as many junk cars as they can—

    Fiction book (1996)

  • He decided to soup up his car with a new turbocharger to improve its speed.

  • After checking the specifications, she planned to soup up her motorcycle for better performance.

Synonyms

to beef up
vsto soup up
  • Informal
34 4.5

To make something stronger or more effective

focuses on changing machines specifically to increase power
to hop up
vsto soup up
  • Informal
1 7.6

To make a car engine more powerful by changing parts

focuses on altering machines to boost power and performance
to buff up
vsto soup up
  • Informal
1 5.8

To make something better in how it works or how it looks

refers specifically to modifying machines to increase performance
to hot up
vsto soup up
  • Jargon
8.3

To make an engine or machine more powerful for racing

is about modifying machines to raise power and performance
to vamp up
vsto soup up
  • Informal
8.1

To make something more attractive by adding new parts

aims to change machines to increase power rather than look

Antonyms

to decrease
325 2.0

To make something smaller in amount or size

to downgrade
43 4.9

To make something lower in rank, value or importance

How Powerful

to soup up
  • Informal
4 6.4
to upgrade
177 3.5
to modify
268 3.2

Surface Forms

soup up infinitive
souped up past
souped up past participle
souping up present participle
soups up third person singular

Morphology

soup + up

The particle 'up' conveys an increase or enhancement, which gives a partial clue, but the element 'soup' does not transparently mean 'modify' or 'improve' (and is not listed here as a verb meaning 'enhance'). Because the main lexical component is idiomatic/slang and the full sense (tuning a vehicle to increase performance) cannot be reliably derived by a B1 learner from the constituents alone, the expression is only partially predictable.

Etymology

Soup up likely comes from old car shops, where people talked about adding a little extra 'soup'—a mix of parts or fuel—to an engine to make it stronger. That's why soup up means 'to modify something to increase its power or performance'.