spume

From Old French espume, from Latin spūma.

• IPA^(key): /spjum/

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• Rhymes: -uːm

spume (countable and uncountable, plural spumes)

1. Foam or froth of liquid, particularly that of seawater.
   • (Can we date this quote?) John Milton

     Materials dark and crude, / Of spiritous and fiery spume.

   • 1855, Robert Browning, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”, XIX:

     No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms; / This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath / For the fiend's glowing hoof - to see the wrath / Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.

   • 1892, James Yoxall, chapter 5, in The Lonely Pyramid:

     The desert storm was riding in its strength; the travellers lay beneath the mastery of the fell simoom. […] Roaring, leaping, pouncing, the tempest raged about the wanderers, drowning and blotting out their forms with sandy spume.

   • 1906, Jack London, White Fang, part I, ch I,

     Their breath froze in the air as it left their mouths, spouting forth in spumes of vapour that settled upon the hair of their bodies and formed into crystals of frost.

   • 1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy:

     A strong sea wind lashed at his city suit, salt rain stung his eyes, balls of spume skimmed across his path.

• spumous
• spumy

spume (third-person singular simple present spumes, present participle spuming, simple past and past participle spumed)

1. To froth.

• pumse

spume f

1. plural of spuma