afoam

English

Etymology

From a- +‎ foam.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /əˈfoʊm/

Adjective

afoam (not comparable)

1. In a foaming state; producing foam.

   The sea is all afoam.

   • 1849, Charlotte Brontë, chapter 15, in Shirley‎^[1], volume 2, Leipzig: Tauchnitz, page 305:

     MacTurk, being summoned, came with steed afoam.

   • 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Chapter 100”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 487:

     “Well, this old great-grandfather [whale], with the white head and hump, runs all afoam into the pod, and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line.”

   • 1916, Aldous Huxley, “The Walk”, in Donald Watt, editor, The Collected Poetry of Aldous Huxley‎^[2], New York: Harper & Row, published 1971, page 37:

     Sunday beer / Afoam in silver rumkins

   • 1998, J. P. Donleavy, Wrong Information Is Being Given Out at Princeton,‎^[3], London: Little, Brown, page 73:

     a tugboat hauling barges, its bow afoam pushing its way through the ripples and waves

2. Covered or filled (with something foaming or resembling foam).
   • 1896, John Todhunter, “The Fate of the Sons of Usna”, in Three Irish Bardic Tales,‎^[4], London: J.M.Dent, page 112:

     mighty horns of ale, and cups of gold afoam / With strong nut-coloured mead

   • 1933, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 32, in Pat of Silver Bush‎^[5], Toronto: McClelland and Stewart:

     The garden was afoam with starry white cosmos backed by the stately phalanx of the Prince’s Feather.

   • 1988, Charlotte MacLeod (as Alisa Craig), The Grub-and-Stakers Pinch a Poke, New York: Avon, Chapter 6, p. 48,^[6]

     […] Minerva […] arrived with a huge armload of costumes, followed by Zilla and a couple more, all afoam with petticoats.

   • 2000, Jan Thornhill, “Extremes” in Drought & Other Stories, Dunvegan, ON: Cormorant Books, p. 126,^[7]

     Margot’s thick black hair afoam with Spic and Span, swooshing back and forth across a grimy kitchen floor

Adverb

afoam (not comparable)

1. In a foaming state.

Further reading

• “afoam”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

Anagrams

• AAMOF