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Glite Dictionary
soylent green

soylent green

4 9.9
A fictional food said to be made from people and used to warn about suspicious food
  • noun
  • /ˈsɔɪlənt ɡriːn/
  • NSFW
: soylent green
  • In the film 'soylent green,' the shocking revelation about the product's ingredients left audiences horrified.

Examples

  • I do believe that when we dined on this soylent green, the main ingredient was in fact human beings.

    Blog text (23)

  • References to soylent green often appear in discussions about sustainability and ethical food sources.

  • Many people joke about the quality of fast food, comparing it to soylent green, something with questionable origins.

Surface Forms

soylent green singular
soylent greens plural

Morphology

soylent + green

This is a proper-name allusion from a specific film; the constituent 'soylent' is not a transparent English word (not decomposable for learners) and 'green' only evokes a colour, not the idea of human-derived food. The MWE's meaning (a fictional food made from people) depends on cultural/film knowledge rather than compositional semantics, so a B1 learner who only knows the parts would not derive the idiomatic sense.

Etymology

The noun soylent green comes from a 1973 film where a popular food called Soylent Green is actually made from people, creating a shocking image. So today people use soylent green to joke about or warn that something is 'food of unknown or suspicious origin'.