What was said? They want it all – from soup to nuts!
Did someone really say that? Yes – when talking about a new project and what’s in scope (which led us to brainstorm new ones to try to plant like “from larva to kaleidoscope”).
What does it mean? It means the whole thing – from start to finish – the whole “enchilada” if you will.
Origin: A formal, full course dinner that apparently used to begin with soup (always) and end with nuts (after dessert even!). These lavish meals were the norm back in the 1800s where the number of courses you were served ranged from a mere four all the way to sixteen! According to some, the roots of “soup to nuts” has a Latin origin referring to Roman meals where the meal began with an egg and ended with an apple (ab ovo usque ad mala).
The term has come to be less about food and more about covering every detail or part of the topic at hand.
HOT Idioms 