soap
Americannoun
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soaps
plural
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a substance used for washing and cleansing purposes, usually made by treating a fat with an alkali, as sodium or potassium hydroxide, and consisting chiefly of the sodium or potassium salts of the acids contained in the fat.
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any metallic salt of an acid derived from a fat.
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Slang. money, especially as used for bribery in politics.
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Slang. Also soap opera.
verb (used with object)
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soaps,
present (3rd person singular)
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soaped,
past participle, past
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soaping
present participle
idioms
noun
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a cleaning or emulsifying agent made by reacting animal or vegetable fats or oils with potassium or sodium hydroxide. Soaps often contain colouring matter and perfume and act by emulsifying grease and lowering the surface tension of water, so that it more readily penetrates open materials such as textiles See also detergent
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any metallic salt of a fatty acid, such as palmitic or stearic acid See also metallic soap
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slang flattery or persuasive talk (esp in the phrase soft soap )
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informal short for soap opera
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slang money, esp for bribery
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slang not possible or successful
verb
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(tr) to apply soap to
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slang
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to flatter or talk persuasively to
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to bribe
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A substance used for washing or cleaning, consisting of a mixture of sodium or potassium salts of naturally occurring fatty acids. Like detergents, soaps work by surrounding particles of grease or dirt with their molecules, thereby allowing them to be carried away. Unlike detergents, soaps react with the minerals common in most water, forming an insoluble film that remains on fabrics. For this reason soap is not as efficient a cleaner as most detergents. The film is also what causes rings to form in bathtubs.
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Compare detergent
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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soapsimple
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soapssimple
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have soapedperfect
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has soapedperfect
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am soapingprogressive
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are soapingprogressive
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is soapingprogressive
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have been soapingperfect progressive
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has been soapingperfect progressive
Past
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soapedsimple
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had soapedperfect
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was soapingprogressive
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were soapingprogressive
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had been soapingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of soap
before 1000; Middle English sope, Old English sāpe, cognate with German Seife, Dutch zeep, all < West Germanic (perhaps ≫ Latin sāpō; cf. saponify)
Explanation
Soap gets bubbly and helps cut through dirt and oil. People use soap for cleaning things like clothes, dishes, hands, and bodies. Don’t bother washing your mouth out with soap, though. It doesn’t get rid of bad words. If you ask a chemist about soap, she'll call it a surfactant, a substance that reduces the surface tension of a liquid, making it spreadable. Think of what happens when you lather up a bar of soap under running water and wash your hands with the lather. Soap is made out of natural fats or oils mixed with lye. The Old English root, sape, originally referred to the red hair dye Germanic warriors used to appear scarier.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
A few years later, she was a regular on a soap opera, channeling her darkest fears into tears that would have adults heaping praise upon her.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 17, 2026
Beginning her career as a child actor, Panettiere was just four years old when she was cast on the popular US soap opera One Life to Live.
From BBC ● Aug. 17, 2026
And during the middle of it, I saw that she was wearing yellow rubber gloves with soap coming off because she was doing the washing up.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 12, 2026
Sometimes the market is rich in soap, flowers and decorative squash but not in dinner.
From Salon ● Aug. 4, 2026
“I’m going to make Gelifen take a bath. You can help. He tries to eat the soap, and then he farts bubbles for days afterward.”
From "Impossible Creatures" by Katherine Rundell
Far from seeming like a steely leader in a rigorous era, he instead recalls all those gentle, soft, pouty-lipped dreamboats who pop up interchangeably in young-adult soaps on the streaming services.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026
Lohrmann has cancer and can’t work a regular schedule, so she has tried all sorts of side hustles over the years, including making soaps and beekeeping.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026
They’ve got beautiful stools, striped upholstering, but they also have, you know, soaps and again incense, and just cute things.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 22, 2026
Lavender grows in thick, fragrant patches along the tour route and is infused into soaps sold at the on-site store.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 27, 2026
It is the TV that keeps us going, from Jerry to Sally to Hawaii Five-0 and then on to the soaps.
From "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich
“In the stables, the Queen’s horses were again at the ready, coats groomed, saddles and bridles soaped and stirrups polished,’’ Dimbleby wrote.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 11, 2022
Rhoda soaped a washcloth and began to scrub beneath the folds of her daughter’s skin.
From New York Times ● Jan. 21, 2015
Actually, according to the Post, he “took some large metal pans that did not appear to be dirty, soaped them up and rinsed them…as the cameras clicked and the TV cameras rolled.”
From Salon ● Oct. 16, 2012
The tune "Sticky Situation," for instance, mushrooms into the spectacle of a half-dozen boys getting their mouths soaped by moms.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 10, 2010
Then the barber used some of them pointy killing-looking scissors to cut the cap’n’s chin and muttonchops down afore he soaped ’em up and shaved ’em off.
From "The Journey of Little Charlie" by Christopher Paul Curtis
Set up an assembly line from soaping and scrubbing to rinsing to drying.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 22, 2023
Songul Yucesoy carefully washes her dishes, soaping the plates and cutlery before rinsing off the bubbles and laying them out to dry.
From BBC ● Mar. 5, 2023
Doing it while a shower is running and then soaping up, thus creating a steamy-sudsy environment, would be even better for masking the odors your body produces.
From Slate ● May 25, 2020
He enumerates some pleasures of life on the outside — sleeping on comfortable sheets, soaping up a loofah sponge in the shower.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 17, 2020
But there’s a sponge for soaping, a washcloth for rinsing, and a towel for drying.
From "Dry" by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
