foam up

present singular third person foams up · participle present foaming up · participle past foamed up · past foamed up

1. intransitiveTo become foamy, create a foam; to rise with a foamy surface or covered with something resembling foam

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

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

   2 more examples

   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.

   1933, Ethel Lina White, chapter 12, in Some Must Watch

   […] 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.

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

2. figurativelyintransitiveTo take place, arise, erupt, develop.

   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.”

   1926 October 18, “Portent Hatched”, in Time

   1 more example

   […] 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.

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

3. transitiveTo cause to become foamy; to cover with foam.

   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.

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

   2 more examples

   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).

   2006, Cleo Coyle, chapter 2, in Murder Most Frothy, Penguin, page 22

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

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