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Alphabet soup is a kind of soup containing noodles shaped like the letters of the English alphabet. Alphabet soup is usually a prepared, canned vegetable soup with letter-shaped noodles. This type of soup is usually in the condensed form, to which water is added to make palatable. A popular brand of condensed-style alphabet soup is Campbell Soup Company. Alphabet-shaped pasta can also be bought, and these noodles can be added to home made soup. It is traditionally popular with American children, and may be served by parents or schools to encourage young children to learn to read. Therefore the marketing of the product is geared towards young children. Spelling words with alphabet-soup noodles is usually a mildly tolerated form of "playing with food".
Metaphorical sense In the metaphorical sense, the term is used to describe an abundance of abbreviations or acronyms. In this sense, the term goes back at least as far as Franklin D. Roosevelt's alphabet agencies of the New Deal. In the United States one of the most common targets of the term is the Federal Government on account of the multitude of agencies that it has spawned, including the NSA, CIA, FBI, USSS, BATF, DEA and INS. At times, the Central Asian republics (such as Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan) that gained independence after the fall of the Soviet Union have been called "alphabet soup countries" because of their long and consonant-filled names. The many sanctioning bodies of boxing (e.g., WBA, WBO, IBF, WBC, IBA, etc.) are often referred to disparagingly as "alphabet soup organizations." | ||||||||
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