"soup sandwich" meaning in English

See soup sandwich in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: En-au-soup sandwich.ogg [Australia] Forms: soup sandwiches [plural]
Etymology: An expression of military origin, calling to mind a picture of soup being poured over bread. Head templates: {{en-noun}} soup sandwich (plural soup sandwiches)
  1. (US, idiomatic) Someone or something that is not as it should be; something disorganized or unfinished. Tags: US, idiomatic Related terms: shit sandwich
    Sense id: en-soup_sandwich-en-noun-Az8P145Q Categories (other): American English, English entries with incorrect language header

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for soup sandwich meaning in English (1.8kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "An expression of military origin, calling to mind a picture of soup being poured over bread.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "soup sandwiches",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "soup sandwich (plural soup sandwiches)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "American English",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "That's as messed up as a soup sandwich."
        },
        {
          "text": "That guy is a big soup sandwich."
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005 January 27, Jon R. Anderson, “Army wrapping up work on final draft of 1st Infantry Division relocation plan”, in Stars and Stripes, retrieved 2009-09-08",
          "text": "“Right now it’s all still very much a soup sandwich,” said the Army official of the ongoing planning efforts, “but we expect to trot the whole thing out in April.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Someone or something that is not as it should be; something disorganized or unfinished."
      ],
      "id": "en-soup_sandwich-en-noun-Az8P145Q",
      "links": [
        [
          "disorganized",
          "disorganized"
        ],
        [
          "unfinished",
          "unfinished"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(US, idiomatic) Someone or something that is not as it should be; something disorganized or unfinished."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "shit sandwich"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-soup sandwich.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/da/En-au-soup_sandwich.ogg/En-au-soup_sandwich.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/En-au-soup_sandwich.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "soup sandwich"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "An expression of military origin, calling to mind a picture of soup being poured over bread.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "soup sandwiches",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "soup sandwich (plural soup sandwiches)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "shit sandwich"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "American English",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "text": "That's as messed up as a soup sandwich."
        },
        {
          "text": "That guy is a big soup sandwich."
        },
        {
          "ref": "2005 January 27, Jon R. Anderson, “Army wrapping up work on final draft of 1st Infantry Division relocation plan”, in Stars and Stripes, retrieved 2009-09-08",
          "text": "“Right now it’s all still very much a soup sandwich,” said the Army official of the ongoing planning efforts, “but we expect to trot the whole thing out in April.”",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Someone or something that is not as it should be; something disorganized or unfinished."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "disorganized",
          "disorganized"
        ],
        [
          "unfinished",
          "unfinished"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(US, idiomatic) Someone or something that is not as it should be; something disorganized or unfinished."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "US",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-soup sandwich.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/da/En-au-soup_sandwich.ogg/En-au-soup_sandwich.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/En-au-soup_sandwich.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "soup sandwich"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.