from soup to nuts

Idioms  

1. Also,. From beginning to end, throughout, as in We went through the whole agenda, from soup to nuts, or She had to learn a whole new system from A to Z, or It rained from start to finish, or We did over the whole house from stem to stern. The first expression, with its analogy to the first and last courses of a meal, appeared in slightly different forms (such as from potage to cheese) from the 1500s on; the precise wording here dates only from the mid-1900s. The second expression alludes to the first and last letters of the Roman alphabet; see also alpha and omega. The third comes from racing and alludes to the entire course of the race; it dates from the mid-1800s. The last variant is nautical, alluding to the front or stem, and rear or stern, of a vessel.

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Example Sentences

One might say the menu at “The Bear” has gone from soup to nuts, because as season 5 commences, the staff is coming unhinged.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 25, 2026

Because a movie is edited and there's never a take that's perfect from soup to nuts, from A to Z.

From Salon • Jun. 1, 2023

"He just admitted to a civil rights violation from soup to nuts."

From Fox News • Dec. 17, 2021

Basically, a major distributor of media combined with a big producer of media, giving the new company the potential of controlling the entire media process, from soup to nuts.

From New York Times • Jul. 14, 2018

At a picnic there is no such expression as "from soup to nuts," for there is no soup, and perhaps no nuts, but there is everything else in tantalizing abundance.

From Reveries of a Schoolmaster by Pearson, Francis B.

Related Words

• absolutely
• entirely
• perfectly
• positively
• quite
• thoroughly
• totally
• wholly