Alphabet soup is a metaphor for an abundance of

abbreviation An abbreviation () is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening (linguistics), shortening, contraction (grammar), contraction, initialism (which includes acronym), or crasis. An abbreviation may be a shortened for ...

s or

acronym An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial Letter (alphabet), letter of each wor ...

s, named for a common dish made from alphabet pasta. Its use dates at least as far back as Franklin D. Roosevelt's alphabet agencies of the

New Deal The New Deal was a series of wide-reaching economic, social, and political reforms enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, in response to the Great Depression in the United States, Great Depressi ...

. In the United States, the

federal government A federation (also called a federal state) is an entity characterized by a political union, union of partially federated state, self-governing provinces, states, or other regions under a #Federal governments, federal government (federalism) ...

is described as an alphabet soup on account of the multitude of agencies that it has spawned, including the NSA, CIA,

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

, USSS, ATF, DEA, EPA, NCIS,

IRS The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting Taxation in the United States, U.S. federal taxes and administerin ...

and INS. In 1938, a US barbershop harmony organization was founded, aptly named SPEBSQSA or the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America, as a humorous lampoon to these numerous "alphabet soup" agencies. The alphabet soup metaphor has been used to describe issues in comprehension that have major effects on scholarship, including confusion between different theories. One such example of alphabet soup affecting scholarship is in statistical testing, in which distinction between p and α are not always made clear because of the "alphabet soup" of letters referring to statistical evidence and errors. The many distinctions between types of pneumonia have also been described as an alphabet soup, requiring a scholarly article detailing the differences between the many acronyms. Alphabet soup has also been used to describe longer initialisms based on ''

LGBT LGBTQ people are individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning. Many variants of the initialism are used; LGBTQIA+ people incorporates intersex, asexual, aromantic, agender, and other individuals. The gro ...

'' such as ''LGBTQQIAAP''. Alphabet soup is also used to describe historical language scripts that appear as long sequences of symbols that do not have clear demarcations of words.

References

Sociolinguistics {{Sociolinguistics-stub