Pea-Soup
/ˈpiːsuːp/noun
A thick soup made with peas, or a dense yellow-green fog.
Did you know?The fog sense of pea-soup is a 19th-century comparison to the soup’s thick, yellow-green appearance, not a magical term — but it became so iconic that London’s worst smog was literally nicknamed “pea-souper.”
Etymological Timeline
Old English
OE
pise
“pea”
Middle English
ME
pese
“pea”
Late Middle English
English
pe-soup
“pea soup; a soup made with peas”
19th Century
English
pea-soup
“dense yellow-green fog, especially London smog”
Modern English
English
pea-soup
“a thick soup made with peas; by extension, very thick fog”