oxtail soup

3.2

A soup made by cooking the tail of a cow slowly with vegetables

noun
/ˈɑkˌteɪl suːp/

: sopa de rabo de buey

After a long day, he found comfort in his grandmother's delicious oxtail soup, made just like she used to prepare it.

Examples

Have you tried oxtail soup before?
I love oxtail soup!
He ordered a bowl of oxtail soup as a starter at the restaurant.
On a cold day, nothing is more comforting than homemade oxtail soup.
Traditional oxtail soup requires several hours of slow cooking to develop its rich flavor.
On a chilly day, nothing warms the soul quite like a bowl of oxtail soup cooked with fresh vegetables.
For dinner, we enjoyed a hearty oxtail soup that was flavored with aromatic herbs and served with crusty bread.

Surface Forms

oxtail soup singular

oxtail soups plural

Morphology

oxtail + soup

The meaning 'a soup made from oxtail' is directly and compositionally derived from 'oxtail' (the tail/meat of an ox) + 'soup' (a liquid dish). This follows the common noun+noun food-naming pattern in English and is immediately predictable to a learner who knows both constituent words, even if 'oxtail' itself is less frequent.

Etymology

Oxtail soup comes from a simple, literal picture: cooks used the actual ox's tail to make a slow cooked, very rich broth by boiling the bones and meat. That's why oxtail soup today means 'a rich, hearty meat soup'.