spume

American  

[spyoom] / spyum /

verb (used with object)

spumed, spuming

1. to eject or discharge as or like foam or froth; spew (often followed byforth ).

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verb (used without object)

spumed, spuming

1. to foam; froth.

noun

1. foam, froth, or scum.

spume British  

/ spjuːm /

noun

1. foam or surf, esp on the sea; froth

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verb

1. (intr) to foam or froth

Other Word Forms

• spumous
  adjective
• spumy
  adjective

Etymology

Origin of spume

1300–50; Middle English < Latin spūma foam, froth; akin to foam

Explanation

As a noun, spume means the froth you find on sea water. As a verb, it means to make frothy, as in...well...frothy seawater. If you've ever wondered why seawater produces so much froth, note that the bubbles come from high concentrations of surfactants, or organic material in the water. The spuming, or bubbling action happens when breaking waves introduce air into the water and then trap it in bubble form. To remember spume, just think about the foam that washes up on the beach and sticks there for a time. You could be forgiven for thinking of it as what the ocean spews forth.

Example Sentences

The style Matthiessen conjures is almost visual, with fragments of scene description and lines of unattributed dialogue arranged on the page like solitary brushstrokes or like breakers of spume on the open sea.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 21, 2025

And with its evocations of cliffs, peaks, sails and spume, the building’s form relays a sympathetic message from the San Gabriel Mountains looming to the northeast to the surf at the city’s other end.

From Los Angeles Times • May 22, 2019

Dinosaurish creatures as big as skyscrapers do battle with equally gigantic robots on land and sea, pulverizing familiar cities and churning up geysers of spume.

From New York Times • Jul. 11, 2013

Over at Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, a very lifelike animatronic head, hooked up to a dodgy life-support system of tubes and wires, vomits a frothy spume into a bucket.

From The Guardian • Oct. 25, 2010

In the western ocean it harried the sea flat, lifting water bodily out of water and carrying it as spume.

From "The Once and Future King" by T. H. White