soap bubble
Americannoun
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a bubble of soapsuds.
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something that lacks substance or permanence.
noun
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a bubble formed from soapy water
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something that is ephemeral but attractive
Etymology
Origin of soap bubble
First recorded in 1805–15
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.
Our cells are surrounded by a fragile membrane that's only 5 nanometers thick, 1/20 of a soap bubble.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 22, 2024
Over billions of years, gravity pulled additional material into those baryon-dense regions, and galaxies and galactic clusters preferentially formed along their boundaries in thin shells like dust settling on a soap bubble.
From Scientific American ● Sep. 27, 2023
She would be washing the dishes at home, the thought floating by like a stray soap bubble: Could she, Jessie Buckley, muster the courage to take on a role like Mariche?
From Washington Post ● Jan. 17, 2023
Mr. Sokolsky proposed a seemingly absurd idea: a series placing a model in what appeared to be a giant soap bubble in or over familiar locations around Paris.
From New York Times ● Sep. 14, 2022
But Grumman was directing it fearlessly, and coming to no harm either, because the thing listened closely to him and then drifted upward like a soap bubble until it was lost in the canopy.
From "The Subtle Knife" by Philip Pullman
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.
