soup kitchen
Americannoun
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a place where food, usually soup, is served at little or no charge to people experiencing food insecurity.
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Military Slang. (in World War I) a mobile kitchen.
noun
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a place or mobile stall where food and drink, esp soup, is served to destitute people
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military a mobile kitchen
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of soup kitchen
First recorded in 1850–55
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Daytime activities included volunteering at a soup kitchen, handing out food to families in Parque Maceo and dropping off N95 masks and meds at the towering Hospital Hermanos Ameijeiras.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 3, 2026
Dishes clatter, steam bursts from large cooking pots and music is seeping through the bustling chatter of Russian pensioners, hunched over bowls of free meals in a Saint Petersburg soup kitchen.
From Barron's ● Feb. 6, 2026
Apparently not when he’s working a soup kitchen, according to these legal aces.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 18, 2025
"We'll let the parent know that it's there, and then the child doesn't know that it was from a soup kitchen, because some parents are embarrassed."
From BBC ● Dec. 14, 2025
She tried to focus on how much she was helping them, as if this were a charitable deed, purely altruistic: like volunteering at a soup kitchen, or adopting a dog from a shelter.
From "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
