alphabet soup

1. (countable, uncountable)A type of soup that contains noodles in the shape of various alphabetical letters, sometimes also numbers.

   Meronym: alfabeto

   Parents have been entertaining their children at mealtime with alphabet soup since the nineteenth century.

   Buchstabensuppe

   soup that contains small noodles in the shape of letters of the alphabet

2. (countable, figuratively, uncountable)A cryptic overabundance of acronyms and abbreviations.

   The various engineering teams' correspondence on circuit board design was an alphabet soup to outsiders.

   Abkürzungsdschungel

3. (countable, figuratively, metonymically, uncountable)A quantity of people or organizations that are referred to by acronyms.

   too many three-letter agencies, constituting an alphabet soup

4. (countable, figuratively, particle, uncountable)A physical state in which there is a miscellany of different particles, often designated by letters.

5. (countable, slang, uncountable)The series of preliminary races (denoted by letters) through which drivers must advance to the main event.

regular