Souped Up

I was looking at some old magazines and they kept referring to the motor as "souped up" Does anyone know how that phrase was incorporated into building a engine ? I grew up in that era (age 63) and remember saying it myself, but now I'm wondering where it came from.

 

I remember reading a reference in a hot rod book stating that "soup" was an old term for airplane fuel, or just plain special high powered engine fuel. Most likely that's where it caught on.

 

originally in the early days
souped up meant running with nitroglycerin in the fuel
it made a soupy mixture i think
hopped up and gowed up
were refering to opium (hop / gow) which was given to racing horses to make them go faster
sometimes when a person was on drugs they said gowed up or hopped up when talking about it
this eventually just worked its was into cars that were made to go faster
hop-ups, gow jobs, hopped up, gowed up, soup jobs, souped up etc.

Zach

 

Cool.

 

This topic came up a few years back. The term Gow Job, however, was not definitively pronounced. So, is it GOW as in COW or GOW as in GO?

snow
low
show
know
------
long "O"

wow
now
how
ka-pow
------
short "O"

 

it rhymes with COW or PLOW
8 for GOW 4 for PLOW was an old saying

and I've heard it in the movie "HOT ROD" from 1949
"i got a hotter ignition""that ought to give you more GOW"
Zach

 

Well, Holy COW, I'll go with GOW.....

 

I just ran accross the following the other day doing some unrelated etymological research:

"On October 25, 2005, our contributor Kaz Vorpal entered the putative substitution supe up»soup up in the database, with the following note:

When you supe up a car, you are making the car super, or supercharging it. Not adding a liquified meal.
The supercharger was patented in 1900.
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The original form is indeed soup up. Arnold Zwicky supplied the following references:

AHD4 and NOAD2 both have only “soup up”, AHD without further comment, NOAD suggesting that “super-” might have influenced the formation. OED2 has no entry for “supe” v., but does have “soup up” v. from 1931 (in “souped up”), which it suggests might have been influenced by “super-”, but otherwise derives from the following sense of “soup” n.:


1911 Webster’s Dict., Soup, any material injected into a horse with a view to changing its speed or temperament."

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Considering SUHRsc's post, maybe there's something to it. Imagine a nitro injected thoroughbred.

​

 

cool, thanks for posting that
Zach