#Soup

A lot of the things being argued over in this site are very serious and meaningful, but that’s boring. 

I’m tired of debating things that actually matter, so for this one, is the ocean a soup?

This has been a long standing debate I’ve had with my friends.

They say it is a soup, because it fits the basic dictionary definition of a soup. It has meat, vegetables, and liquid. It has all of the components, and so it is.

If find this very short-sighted. Sure, it fits the basic definition, but there are many qualities a soup has that the ocean does not. They aren’t included in the normal definition because they go without saying. 

Obviously, a soup is a man made object that is made for the express purpose of being eaten. Its entire job is to be eaten, and the ocean cannot be eaten. If you did, you would die. 

Secondly, words don’t derive their meaning from arbitrary dictionary definitions, they get meaning from how we colloquially use them. Dictionaries do their best to summarize that, but they are not perfect.

If I was at a restaurant and ordered a soup, and was presented with the ocean, I would be pretty pissed. No one ever uses the word soup to describe the ocean, and so the ocean is not a soup.

What do you think though?