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Dumb as soup

maxguncel

Senior Member
Turkish
Thankfully, He blessed me with two other children who are dumb as soup.
What does "dumb as soup" mean?
As an insult to a person's intellegence, you can say they are as dumb as whatever inanimate object. There are common comparisons, but you can also use anything for comparison, often trying for a humourous effect.
The one I hear most commonly is "dumb as a post".
This may be the topic for a separate thread, but I always tended to think it was people conflating "dumb as a..." with "deaf as a post."

Google shows that "deaf as a post" has 35,500 hits while "dumb as a post" has 32,000 hits, so they're both equally as popular at this point anyway, it appears.
This may be the topic for a separate thread, but I always tended to think it was people conflating "dumb as a..." with "deaf as a post."

Google shows that "deaf as a post" has 35,500 hits while "dumb as a post" has 32,000 hits, so they're both equally as popular at this point anyway, it appears.

I don't know if it is conflation; while the hearing faculties of posts may not be good, posts also do not tend to be chatty, either.
I guess it's from The Big Bang Theory, S1E4:
Mrs. Cooper: Leonard, the lord never gives us more than we can handle. Thankfully, he blessed me with two other children who are dumb as soup.
(Mrs. Cooper is Sheldon Cooper's mother; Sheldon is very smart and not easy to handle.)
Presumably, it means "very dumb." It's not a phrase I'm familiar with; perhaps it's a literal translation of a phrase common in another language.
I'm not familiar with it either. The German translation would be "dumm wie Suppe", an expression that appears on quite a few German-language websites, so I think there could be something in your literal translation theory.
Isn't Mrs. Cooper from Texas? Texans are very inventive with their sayings. I remember this episode, and I remember thinking it was unusual to me but it's not surprising to hear a new saying from a Texan.
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