Word.ws English Dictionary

souped-up

UK/ˈsuːpt ʌp//ˈsupt ʌp/

souped-up adjective: of a racehorse: injected with a substance to make it run faster or to change its temperament. Also the simple past and past participle of soup-up.

Adjective

souped-up (comparative more souped-up, superlative most souped-up)

  1. (cant) Of a racehorse: injected with a substance to make it run faster or to change its temperament.
  2. (slang) Of an engine, a motor vehicle, etc.: modified for higher performance.
    • $600.00 BUYS T. M. Scout with "Souped up" OX5 motor. Snappiest commercial single seater built. H. W. Mackie, Air Service, Houston, Texas.1925 September, “Classified Advertisements”, in H[enry] H[aven] Windsor, editor, Popular Mechanics Magazine, volume 44, number 3, Chicago, Ill.: Popular Mechanics Co., →OCLC, page 33, column 3
    • [W]ill it be possible to mount a larger engine for use in La Paz? I doubt very much if the standard 165 would get off the ground up here with a student. I wish you would take that up with the factory and see if they can put out a job with a suped-up seven-cylinder job. The R-540 I think it is.1933 September 13, “[Appendix: Exhibits] Exhibit No. 343: CWW #35 [Letter to C. W. Webster, Curtiss-Wright Export Corporation]”, in Munitions Industry: Hearings before the Special Committee...
    Synonyms:
    hopped up
  3. (broadly) Improved.
    • As with the previous Omicron subvariants, it seems likely that the US will follow those regions once again, with or without the new souped-up vaccines.2022 July 20, “Opinion: Covid-19 continues to surprise us”, in CNN
    • Since its launch in November last year, ChatGPT has become an extraordinary hit. Essentially a souped-up chatbot, the AI program can churn out answers to the biggest and smallest questions in life, and draw up college essays, fictional stories, haikus, and even job application letters.2023 January 13, Ian Sample, “ChatGPT: what can the extraordinary artificial intelligence chatbot do?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
  4. (US, slang) Intoxicated by alcohol or drugs.
    • If you have had any experience at all with the effect that it has upon these people when they are in situations of violence, you can understand that you cannot send these persons who are souped up on drugs to perform a delicate mission […]1968, Melvin M. Belli, Trial and Tort Trends: Belli Seminar, page 253
    Synonyms:
    juiced
  5. (New-England, US, slang) Excited.
    Synonyms:
    juiced

Also used as

souped-up is also the simple past and past participle of soup-up.

Examples of souped-up in a sentence

  • Bush keeps grandson waiting in his souped-up car […] at Eddie's Market, social center of South Brooksville, Maine (pop. 150), where she is vacationing with daughter.1952 September 8, Milton Lehman, “The First Woman Driver: A.A.A. Honors Motorist Who Got License in 1900, Never Had a Dent”, in Henry...
  • The suspicion grows that this souped-up erudition disguises a paucity of thought, which of all things seems to be based on a lack of historical good sense, or, if you will, of good historical sense.1989, Irving Louis Horowitz, “Erich Kahler: History and Society in Retrospect”, in Persuasions and Prejudices: An Informal Compendium of...
  • The final kegs die at around 1800 hours or so, and that is when Coolidge's wife Melanie starts making her souped-up Atomic Kamikazes.2000, J. S. Kindrick, The Spirit Horses, San Jose, Calif.; Lincoln, Neb.: Writers Club Press, iUniverse, →ISBN, page 118:
  • The driverless vehicles ranged from souped-up SUVs (sports utility vehicles) to hi-tech dune buggies.2005 October 9, “Four Robotic Racers Cross Desert”, in BBC News, archived from the original on 13 Mar 2018:

Synonyms of souped-up

Forms of souped-up

comparativemore souped-up
superlativemost souped-up
alternative formsouped
alternative formsouped up
alternative formsuped-up

Origin of souped-up

Uncertain; the fact that the earlier senses seem to be the horse racing cant and United States Navy slang ones suggests a derivation from soup (“liquid food item”), connoting a horse or a person being filled with a liquid. Alternatively, it has been suggested that the term is a modified clipping of supe(r), with reference to an airplane or automobile engine being supercharged: see, for example, the quotation from 1925. This sense appears to post-date the horse-racing and navy slang senses.

Questions about souped-up

What does souped-up mean?
Souped-up means of a racehorse: injected with a substance to make it run faster or to change its temperament.
How do you use souped-up in a sentence?
Bush keeps grandson waiting in his souped-up car […] at Eddie's Market, social center of South Brooksville, Maine (pop. 150), where she is vacationing with daughter.
What part of speech is souped-up?
Souped-up is an adjective.
How do you pronounce souped-up?
Souped-up is pronounced /ˈsuːpt ʌp/ (UK).

Words near souped-up in the dictionary

  1. soupe du jour
  2. soupe maigre
  3. soupe-maigre
  4. souped
  5. souped up
  6. souped-up
  7. souper
  8. souperism
  9. soupers
  10. soupes-maigres
  11. soupfin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: souped-up (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-souped up.flac, en-au-souped-up.ogg.

Cite this entry: “souped-up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/souped-up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.