an alphabet soup?

[rainbow402]

In Congress, Democrats are drafting bills that would create a powerful new regulator — or simply confer new powers on the Federal Reserve — to oversee practices across the entire array of commercial banks, Wall Street firms, hedge funds and nonbank financial companies.
The Treasury Department is rushing to complete its own blueprint for overhauling what is now an alphabet soup of federal and state regulators that often compete against each other and protect their particular slices of the industry as if they were constituents

Dear Teacher,

What is " an alphabet soup" ? Is it slang? Thanks in advance.

[Aligor]

"An alphabet soup" is a confusing assortment or mixture, especially of initials or names of organizations/government agencies. You can say it's slang, but some people might disagree as this expression is not very new.

[rainbow402]

Aligor,

Thanks for your reply. Does it mean a mixture of different people, or companies or organizations?

Is the below sentence I made right?

Many people from all over the world study English here. The BBS is an alphabet soup.

[Anglika]

Aligor,

Thanks for your reply. Does it mean a mixture of different people, or companies or organizations?

Is the below sentence I made right?

Many people from all over the world study English here. The BBS is an alphabet soup.

Not really - though some people might agree that the BBC is turning into an alphabet soup.

The phrase is used to indicate something has become a total and incomprehensible mess.

[rainbow402]

Hi Anglika,

Thanks for your reply. I am crystal clear now. Well, the BBS is great. It is not an alphabet soup. Please forgive my gaffe.

I didn't pay enough attention to Aligor's word-"confusing" in his /her interpretation previously.

Thank you two.

[Tdol]

The BBS is more a cultural stew than an alphabet soup.

[rainbow402]

The BBS is more a cultural stew than an alphabet soup.

Sir, spot on. Yummy! Yet learning English is not duck soup for me.

[Barb_D]

If you think that all of the US federal agencies have abbreviations/acronyms, any time they are all listed together, it will look like alphabet soup.

Let's say the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the National Park Service (NPS) have an environmental issue that will require the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the local state's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), and the project will be managed by the US Army Corps of Engineers, you have a situation in which the stakeholders include the BLM, NPS, EPA, DEP, and USACE. Do you see how that's alphabet soup?

[rainbow402]

Barb_D, Good cook! Your vivid illustration turns " an alphabet soup" into " duck soup". Thank you!

[BobK]

A bit of cultural background - this is true in the UK, and probably* in the USA: a famous and popular canned soup producer (Heinz) makes a sort of soup - popular with children learning to spell (or at least with their parents!) - which contains little bits of pasta in the shape of the letters of the alphabet: http://www.worth1000.com/entries/20500/20692_w.jpg

So what you get in your bowl is a real random mixture of letters. (I believe a precursor product, or maybe a copy, used the term 'alphabetti').

b
*It's the sort of graphic and everyday image that makes me suspect a US origin.