Thick soup of Indian origin with curry.
This spicy soup, native to India but adopted by the English and then especially by the Australians, takes its name from milagutannir, a Tamil phrase meaning pepper-water. Mulligatawny appeared in English in the late eighteenth century, which is why some etymologists have proposed that mulligan stew, which appeared in the early twentieth century as the name of another thick soup made from odds and ends, may have originated as a corruption of mulligatawny. However, mulligan may just as easily be a corruption or a humorous scrambling of slumgullion, a name once used by gold miners and hoboes for a similar sort of ad hoc stew. Alternatively, mulligan stew may simply take its name from some unknown individual, Mulligan being a common Irish name.