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,

     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,

     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, figuratively) To take place, arise, erupt, develop.
   • 1926, “Portent Hatched,” Time, 18 October, 1926,

     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,

     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,

     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,

     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