Soup

Soup \soop\ , noun;
1. A liquid food made by boiling or simmering meat, fish, or vegetables with various added ingredients
2. Slang: Added power, especially horsepower

In light of what we learned about restaurant yesterday, I think it's a good time to talk about soup. Eh, who am I kidding, it's always a good time to talk about soup, especially in February.

Soup has, presumably, been around as long as bowls. That's a long time. This particular English word, however, dates to the 1650's as "liquid food" from French soupe ("soup, broth"). Soupe derives from Late Latin suppa ("bread soaked in broth") which was borrowed from a Germanic language. Which one, we're not sure, but there is Proto-Germanic base *supp- from Proto-Indo-European *seue- ("to take liquid") that spawned it.

Soup as in soup up an engine is first attested in 1921 and comes from the noun soup meaning "narcotic injected into horses to make them run faster." What does that have to do with broth and liquid food? Very little, it's based on supercharge.