afoam en · ADJ
Pronunciation
- /əˈfoʊm/
Etymology
From a- + foam.
Meanings
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(not-comparable) In a foaming state; producing foam.
MacTurk, being summoned, came with steed afoam.
1849, Charlotte Brontë, chapter 15, in Shirley, volume 2, Leipzig: Tauchnitz, page 305:Sunday beer / Afoam in silver rumkins
1916, Aldous Huxley, “The Walk”, in Donald Watt, editor, The Collected Poetry of Aldous Huxley, New York: Harper & Row, published 1971, page 37:“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.”
1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “'”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC, page 487:The sea is all afoam.
a tugboat hauling barges, its bow afoam pushing its way through the ripples and waves
1998, J. P. Donleavy, Wrong Information Is Being Given Out at Princeton,, London: Little, Brown, page 73:
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(not-comparable) Covered or filled (with something foaming or resembling foam).
mighty horns of ale, and cups of gold afoam / With strong nut-coloured mead
1896, John Todhunter, “The Fate of the Sons of Usna”, in Three Irish Bardic Tales,, London: J.M.Dent, page 112:2000, Jan Thornhill, “Extremes” in Drought & Other Stories, Dunvegan, ON: Cormorant Books, p. 126, Margot’s thick black hair afoam with Spic and Span, swooshing back and forth across a grimy kitchen floor
The garden was afoam with starry white cosmos backed by the stately phalanx of the Prince’s Feather.
1933, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 32, in Pat of Silver Bush, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart:1988, Charlotte MacLeod (as Alisa Craig), The Grub-and-Stakers Pinch a Poke, New York: Avon, Chapter 6, p. 48, […] Minerva […] arrived with a huge armload of costumes, followed by Zilla and a couple more, all afoam with petticoats.