Word.ws English Dictionary

stone soup

stone soup noun: a traditional Portuguese thick soup typically made with pork and vegetables.

Noun

stone soup (uncountable)

  1. A traditional Portuguese thick soup typically made with pork and vegetables.
    • In the village of Almeirim nearby, O Toucinho (M), serves the typical stone soup; a charming, friendly, country spot.1984, Fodor's Portugal, 1985
    • Sopa de pedra (stone soup) is a marvellously thick country soup of numerous vegetables and meats. Adding the stone is optional.1998, Timothy J Page, Portugal

Origin of stone soup

Calque of Portuguese sopa de pedra, after a tale in which a traveller places a stone in a cooking-pot and tricks the locals into contributing ingredients; see “Stone Soup”.

Questions about stone soup

What does stone soup mean?
Stone soup means a traditional Portuguese thick soup typically made with pork and vegetables.
What part of speech is stone soup?
Stone soup is a noun.

Words near stone soup in the dictionary

  1. stone rows
  2. Stone sheep
  3. stone skiffing
  4. stone skimming
  5. stone skipping
  6. stone soup
  7. Stone space
  8. Stone spaces
  9. stone sub
  10. stone subeditor
  11. stone subeditors

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: stone soup (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-stone soup.wav.

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