foam up

English

Verb

foam up (third-person singular simple present foams up, present participle foaming up, simple past and past participle foamed up)

1. (intransitive) To become foamy, create a foam; to rise with a foamy surface or covered with something resembling foam
   • 1933, Ethel Lina White, chapter 12, in Some Must Watch‎^[1]:

     In a chastened mood, Helen returned to her own room and lit her spirit-lamp, in order to re-boil the coffee. She was watching the brown bubbles foam up in the saucepan, when she heard the front-door bell.

   • 1961, Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Tristes Tropiques”, in John Russell, transl., Criterion, New York, published 1955, Part I, Chapter 3, p. 35:

     […] valleys deep in a milk-white mist where a continual drip-drip allowed one to hear, rather than see, the enormous soft, and feathery leafage of the tree-ferns as it foamed up from the living fossils of the trunks.

   • 2010 November 12, Rob Davis, “Solving the Mystery of Point Loma’s Sewer Foam”, in Voice of San Diego:

     When the first rain hits […] that big pipe carries a lot of water that blasts the algae and sediment, which then foams up.

2. (intransitive, figurative) To take place, arise, erupt, develop.
   • 1926 October 18, “Portent Hatched”, in Time:

     A tide of Republican scandal foamed up last week and engulfed Germany's greatest post-War soldier, Hans von Seeckt, “The Man with the Iron Monocle.”

   • 1966, Julio Cortázar, chapter 37, in Gregory Rabassa, transl., Hopscotch, Pantheon, published 2014:

     […] Traveler had shown up looking for some suppositories to cure his bronchitis, and out of the explanation he had got from Talita love had foamed up like shampoo in a showerbath.

3. (transitive) To cause to become foamy; to cover with foam.
   • 2006, Cleo Coyle, chapter 2, in Murder Most Frothy, Penguin, page 22:

     As I routinely foamed up his grand lattes, he’d share details about his homicide cases (not to mention his rocky marriage, which was still bordering on divorce).

   • 2010 October 4, Oliver Pickup, “A Cut Above”, in The Daily Mail:

     Face foamed up, I flicked on the shaver before lowering it to my face, and allowed the blades to fizz and chug against my skin.

   • 2012 August 29, Si Si Penaloza, “Leave Las Vegas looking luminous”, in The Globe and Mail:

     After working the rotating brush gently over my face, she begins foaming up the facial’s star product, Cor soap, between her palms.

Synonyms

• (become foamy): froth up