bubble up

present singular third person bubbles up · participle present bubbling up · participle past bubbled up · past bubbled up

1. intransitiveTo move upward in bubbles or in a way suggesting bubbles.

   The kid was fascinated by the air bubbling up from the aquarium vent.

   3 more examples

   So when the well blew, the methane did not bubble up gently.

   2011, Courtney Farrell, Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill, →ISBN, page 8

   So while content can bubble up, it can also flow down to many smaller blogs and reach both a large audience and deep into networks.

   2013, Karine Nahon, Jeff Hemsley, Going Viral, →ISBN, page 89

   The fact that item 3 seems to slowly bubble up to its correct position gives the bubblesort algorithm its name.

   2013, Rod Stephens, Essential Algorithms: A Practical Approach to Computer Algorithms, →ISBN

   Synonyms: blubber, exestuate

2. intransitiveTo reach the surface; to emerge.

   Many of the old feelings bubbled up when I met her again.

   3 more examples

   And stifle them we must to play the role, voices steady, manners nonchalant, amid the torrents of profanities and soul-shrinking depravities that bubble up in a mainstream without margins

   2008, Diana West, The Death of the Grown-Up, →ISBN

   Notice the feelings that bubble up as you write your “What I Don't Know List.”

   2013, Achim Nowak, Infectious, →ISBN

   But it didn't all bubble up and become clear until that last . . . week or so.

   2014, Alice Clayton, Mai Tai'd Up, →ISBN, page 92

plural bubble ups

1. alternativeAlternative form of bubble-up.

   Can we go beyond connections in the form of spillover, or in the form of "trickle down and bubble up"?

   2005, Lene Arnett Jensen, Reed Larson, Reed W. Larson, New horizons in developmental theory and research, page 87

   2 more examples

   Then the middle-income tax cut bill that would have made the transfer from the millionaires to the middle class so that we could have some bubble up in our economy, so that we could put some money into the pockets of average working people who have been squeezed, and of course last week the President vetoed that bill.

   1992, Congressional Record

   So a person may say, “I just can't get this off my mind” or “I have always had this inner urge to do X.” In my view, such repeated bubble ups need expression, and after appropriate thinking about whether such an aspiration uses our Greens or not, properly and sanely implemented.

   2011, Richard G. Hagstrom, The Grass Is Greener: Finding Your True Calling Before Its Too Late, →ISBN