sup

Formssups, supping, supped

Pluralsups

1. 1
   interjectionslang

   An informal greeting or loose inquiry into how someone is, used between people who know each other.

   Like a quick wave across the room that turns into a word.

   Sup, long time no see. How's the new job treating you?

   He nodded and muttered a quick sup as he walked past.

   Similarwassup

   Note

   A greeting worn down from what's up by losing its opening sound, and its spellings show the wear: wassup, w'sup, t'sup, wudup. It can be a simple hello or a real question, and the stock reply, "Not much," answers either. As slang, it belongs among friends and in casual speech, not in formal greetings.

2. 2
   verbintransitive

   To take the evening meal; to eat supper.

   The travelers supped on bread and cold meat at the roadside inn.

   Guests would sup late, long after the music had ended.

   Similardine, eat

   Note

   The evening-meal verb comes through Anglo-Norman super, from soupe, the family of soup. It is intransitive, and it often stands against dine as a different meal. In Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) the Count tells his guest, "I have dined already, and I do not sup." Stevenson's Treasure Island uses it the same way: bring up the cold pie "and let him sup."

3. 3
   verbtransitive

   To take food or drink a little at a time, in sips or small spoonfuls.

   He supped his broth carefully, savoring each mouthful.

   Old sailors would sup grog from battered tin cups.

   Similarsip, drink

   Note

   An old Germanic drinking word: Old English sūpan meant "to sip, drink, taste," and its cousins German saufen and Dutch zuipen lean toward "booze." It usually takes the drink as its object (sup balm and nectar, supped Gerald's ale) or a from-phrase. Keep it apart from the supper verb, a separate word that came through Anglo-Norman from soupe.

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A mouthful or sip of food or drink, or more broadly a meager quantity of water or rain.

   He drank the last sup of ale and set down the cup.

   After weeks of drought, the fields got barely a sup of rain.

   Similarsip, drop, mouthful

   Note

   The noun works two ways. It is countable in a sup of rain water or every sup of the sea, and uncountable in give her sup and shelter, where it means sustenance in general. It sits naturally in dialect speech: Emily Lawless's The Book of Gilly (1906) bathes sore eyes "with a sup of rain water," and the word keeps that homely, spoken flavor.

5. 5
   nouncolloquialcountable

   A superintendent: the person holding that supervisory rank or office.

   The sup signed off on the overtime request that afternoon.

   Officers respected the new sup from the moment she arrived.

   Similarsuperintendent, boss

6. 6
   nouncolloquialcountable

   A dietary supplement, such as protein powder or vitamins, taken to support training or general health.

   Most lifters keep a sup or two stashed in their gym bag.

   She stacks several sups to aid recovery between sessions.

   Similarsupplement

   Note

   Gym talk clips supplement to its first syllable, and the plural is simply sups. The word belongs to the training world and to colloquial speech, where it covers products such as protein powder and creatine. For a general reader, or in anything formal, the full word supplement is the safer choice.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   The supremum, the least upper bound of a set; the smallest quantity greater than or equal to every element.

   The sup of the open interval equals its right endpoint.

   They computed the sup of the bounded sequence before proving convergence.

   Similarsupremum

   Oppositeinfimum

   Note

   A mathematician's shorthand, cut from the first syllable of superior, that works like an operator. One takes the sup of a family of functions, as Serge Lang does with subharmonic functions in Complex Analysis. Econometricians speak of a sup W statistic, the supremum of a family of W statistics. Unlike a maximum, the sup need not belong to the set it bounds.

8. 8
   nouncountable

   At the University of Cambridge, a supervision: a small-group or one-to-one teaching session with a tutor.

   He turned up to the sup without having done any of the reading.

   Most students attend two or three sups a week during term.

   Similarsupervision, tutorial

   Note

   Cambridge student slang, cut from the first syllable of supervision. A supervision is the university's small-group teaching session, the counterpart of what Oxford calls a tutorial, where students talk through work they have handed in. Outside Cambridge this meaning will not be understood, so the word suits college conversation rather than general writing.

9. 9
   adjective

   Being or relating to the squark that is the superpartner of the up quark in supersymmetric theories.

   Detectors are tuned to spot a sup squark if it actually exists.

   The sup squark would share the up quark's quantum numbers, differing only in its spin.

   Oppositesdown

   Note

   Supersymmetry names each quark's partner by adding s- to the quark's name, so the up quark's partner becomes sup. Its counterpart for the down quark is sdown. The adjective is not comparable: a squark either is the sup or it is not. It labels a particle that the theory predicts, which is why careful writing pairs it with words like "would" and "if it exists."

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