English

Verb

froth up ‎(third-person singular simple present froths up, present participle frothing up, simple past and past participle frothed up)

1. (intransitive) To become frothy; to rise with a frothy surface or covered with something resembling froth.
   • 1818, John Keats, “Isabella, or the Pot of Basil,” stanza 41,

     The Spirit mourn’d “Adieu!”—dissolv’d, and left

     The atom darkness in a slow turmoil;

     As when of healthful midnight sleep bereft,

     Thinking on rugged hours and fruitless toil,

     We put our eyes into a pillowy cleft,

     And see the spangly gloom froth up and boil:

     It made sad Isabella’s eyelids ache,

     And in the dawn she started up awake;

   • 1902, Rudyard Kipling, “How the Whale Got His Throat” in Just So Stories,

     ‘Then fetch me some,’ said the Whale, and he made the sea froth up with his tail.

   • 1911, D. H. Lawrence, The White Peacock, Chapter 8,

     As I passed along the edge of the meadow the cow-parsnip was as tall as I, frothing up to the top of the hedge, putting the faded hawthorn to a wan blush.

   • 1941, Emily Carr, Klee Wyck, Chapter 20,

     It was “soperlallie”, or soap berry. It grows in the woods; when you beat the berry it froths up and has a queer bitter taste.

Synonyms

• foam up