Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A place where food is offered free or at very low cost to the needy.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A public establishment, supported by voluntary contributions, for preparing soup and supplying it gratis to the poor.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun a place set up to provide
soup and otherbasic food as acharity or in time of disaster.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a place where food is dispensed to the needy
Etymologies
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Examples
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chained_bear commented on the word soup kitchen
I know what a soup kitchen is and have heard of it before, but what I just learned today, after questioning the phrase's placement in a text referring to the Irish famine of the late 1840s, was that the British Parliament passed the Soup Kitchen Act of 1847. (Unless someone's yanking my chain.) I had no idea the phrase was that old. It struck me as a rather modern (meaning 20th century) phrasing.
Learn something every day.
May 23, 2008
bilby commented on the word soup kitchen
"The San Diego Food Bank, which distributes groceries to 300 soup kitchens, senior centers, food pantries, churches, and other allied nonprofits in sprawling San Diego County, is facing similar marked increases in need. From December 2007 to December 2008, the number of people served by its USDA-funded Emergency Food Assistance Program, which aids low income people via 91 distribution sites, jumped from 37,302 to 65,663 -- a 76% increase."
- Nick Turse, Breaking the Banks, tomdispatch.com, 8 March 2009.
March 9, 2009