alphabet soup

alphabet soup

1. Literally, a soup that contains noodles shaped like the letters of the alphabet. I used to love alphabet soup when I was a kid.
2. By extension, an incoherent or disorganized mix (typically of letters or abbreviations). All of these acronyms in the manual have started to look like alphabet soup.
See also: alphabet, soup
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

alphabet soup

initialisms and acronyms, especially when used excessively. The names of these government agencies are just alphabet soup. Just look at the telephone book! You can't find anything because it's filled with alphabet soup.
See also: alphabet, soup
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.

alphabet soup

incomprehensible or confusing language, typically containing many abbreviations or symbols. informal
The expression alludes to a kind of clear soup containing pasta in the form of letters.
2000 Montreal Mirror Like the IMF, WB, WTO and the rest of the alphabet soup, the FTAA is yet another engine of global capital.
See also: alphabet, soup
Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary

alphabet soup

n. initialisms and acronyms in general. Just look at the telephone book! You can’t find anything because it’s filled with alphabet soup.
See also: alphabet, soup
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
See also:
  • alphabet
  • be in the soup
  • in the soup
  • dog('s) soup
  • transliterate
  • transliterate (something) from (something)
  • transliterate (something) from (something) into (something)
  • transliterate (something) into (something) from (something)
  • be duck soup
  • know (one's) ABCs
References in periodicals archive
She pictured alphabet soup, found some alphabet pasta, and solved the problem.
"Isn't it time that we focused on quality and rigour, rather than an apparent choice which simply doesn't meet the real needs of learners but panders to the alphabet soup of qualifications set up by the private examination bodies?" The Education Minister told Wales on Sunday: "There has been an explosion over recent years in both the number of subjects being taught at A-level and the wide variety of vocational subjects.
The reference includes a key to the alphabet soup of financial abbreviations and acronyms.
"Alphabet Woof!" is a rollicking verse tale with comical illustrations that follows the outline of what would happen if a family dog (named Moxy) ate a whole kettle of alphabet soup and then, surprisingly, was able to speak?
THE proposed new local enterprise body for Liverpool needs to break with the past (Daily Post, September 7) For years, our city-region has been drowning in an alphabet soup of quangos, boards and "partnerships."
And you can get around the alphabet soup of donkey-voting by picking names out of a hat so candidates are listed randomly.
Receiving a report resulting from such screening is the worst nightmare for a pediatrician--an alphabet soup of metabolic disorders and lab tests that require a sophisticated clinical Garmin or TomTom GPS system to navigate.
Day one may seem discouraging, as one nibbles apricots and apples and sips alphabet soup but this is more than made up for the feast offered by the B and C days.
Caption: IT'S HARD ENOUGH finding art 26 fetters in a bowl of alphabet soup. But Rhett Dashwood, an Australian graphic designer, has assembled an entire alphabet using satellite images from Google Earth.
(AUCA), Alphabet Soup (KRSU) and others.The rock group Falcom from the U.S.
The bank is selling a third of its "alphabet soup" of products such as mortgage-backed bonds to a new fund run by C12 Capital Management - which is led by former staff of investment banking arm, Barclays Capital.
This is a common problem for anyone entering a highly technical line of work, but risk and insurance seem particularly impenetrable, displaying a love of acronyms and tech speak that might only be topped by governmental "alphabet soup" agencies like the CIA, FDA, DHS and EPA.
The boom in complex mortgage backed securities and an entire alphabet soup of toxic investments - as well as sub-prime loans to those who could never afford them - were driven by a compensation culture which "ran out of control", he said.
"There has been an alphabet soup of 10 to 15 different groups saying, 'We're the voice of IT," ITAA President Phil Bond told C-SPAN.
The second fundamental observation regarding "Tricks of the Trade" that I have, and this may be the more important, is that there are some scalawags out there and we need to help rid the marketplace of them so that all consumers will have a "safe landing." Two primary points made by "Tricks" is that there are people using doubtful designations that imply an unwarranted expertise (Alphabet Soup) and misrepresentations (Gobbledygook).