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, Some Must Watch, Chapter 12, [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 (1955), translated by John Russell, New York: Criterion, 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, Rob Davis, “Solving the Mystery of Point Loma’s Sewer Foam,” Voice of San Diego, 12 November, 2010, [2]

     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, “Portent Hatched,” Time, 18 October, 1926, [3]

     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, Hopscotch, translated by Gregory Rabassa, Pantheon, 2014, Chapter 37,

     […] 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, Murder Most Frothy, Penguin, Chapter Two, p. 22, [4]

     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, Oliver Pickup, “A Cut Above,” The Daily Mail, 4 October, 2010, [5]

     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, Si Si Penaloza, “Leave Las Vegas looking luminous” in The Globe and Mail, 29 August, 2012, [6]

     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