ketchup

noun

1. (Canada, UK, US, abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis, uncountable)Ellipsis of tomato ketchup (“a tomato-vinegar-based sauce, sometimes containing spices, onion or garlic, and (especially in the US) sweeteners”).

   “tomato ketchup”

   “This diner serves ketchup in red bottles, and mustard in yellow ones.”

2. (archaic, countable)Such a sauce more generally (not necessarily based on tomatoes, but with mushrooms, fish, etc.). This is the older meaning.

   “The bottles, however, were port bottles, but contained mushroom ketchup; […]”

   “To accompany meat, we prepare fruit ketchups and rhubarb chutney.”

verb

1. (transitive)To cover with ketchup.

   “It strikes me she's "ketchupped" the lot! I won't touch a morsel!”

   “"Well," said Chuck, ketchupping his hamburger, "I'd rather do without King Lear than put up with the human agony it sprang out of. I'd rather not have the Eroica than have the big bloody conqueror it tries to immortalize."”

   “Their fellow diners, like their ketchupped grub, were appropriately dashed and splattered with paint and plaster, reading their Suns and Daily Mirror.”