"in the soup"/"fly in my soup"

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On the Language Log, I speculate about the origins of the expression "in the
soup" (= 'in great difficulty'), previously discussed here by Messrs. Popik and
Cohen. I suggest it's related to the family of jokes involving the line,
"Waiter, there's a fly in my soup" (which I trace to 1872).

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002673.html

Comments welcome.


--Ben Zimmer