froth

Etymology

From Middle English froth, frooth, froþ, likely a borrowing from Old Norse froða, from Proto-Germanic *fruþǭ; Old English āfrēoþan (“to foam, froth”) is from same Germanic root. Verb attested from late 14th century. Cf Swedish fradga.

noun

1. foam
   Froth or scum at the paper machine consists largely of clay, rosin, and starch. 1907, Clayton Beadle, Chapters on Papermaking, page 71
   Shortly after we started, while still off the lower end of the island, we sighted a steep point on the coast where the sea was in a great state of turmoil, white with soapy froth. 1922, Hugh Lofting, “8”, in The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle
   Froth is a very important feature of many types of coffee.
2. (figurative) unimportant or insubstantial talk, events, or actions; drivel
   But is it possible for those who speak of God promiscuously and at random, is it possible that they should utter his Name with reverence, when all the rest of the Discourse is nothing but Froth and Levity? 1692, Ezekiel Hopkins, An Exposition on the Ten Commandments, page 185
   They are equally useless and equally ridiculous, but the coquet is the most pernicious: his mind is a vacuum, and hers a plenum; froth itself is too ponderous for the one, and nothing but froth is crammed into the other. 1807, Thomas Holcroft, The Vindictive Man: A Comedy, in Five Acts, page 21
   The want of a good book is not felt till a good book is published—then all the world is dying to read it; but if the public, looking for good books, finds nothing but froth, froth, trash, trash, flummery, and mummery—things that have been said a thousand times before said a thousand times worse than ever—thoughts from those who think not, and who cannot think what thinking is—tales from those who have not heads—observations from those who observe not,—it grows disgusted, and rejects reading altogether. 1832 April, “A Tête à Tête with Mr. Tait”, in Tait's Edinburgh magazine, number 1, page 10
   The efficiency goal forces management to consider the real business over many years and not just the froth business that lasts a few years. 2002, Clive Reading, Strategic Business Planning, page 149
   Their new standards, their environmental regulations, their laws, their estimates, their rates, their interest, their conclustions, their judicial appeals, their reminders and their claims, their hypocritical legal decisions to save a planet that had already been bled dry – froth, froth, nothing but froth. 2010, Anna Gavalda, Consolation, page 369
   Thousands of African children die each day: why do the newspapers continue to discuss unnecessary showbiz froth?
3. The idle rich;
   That it offers the best imaginable field for the economical employment of the least useful of our population, viz. "the froth and the dregs,” those of both extremes of the social scale who prefer adventure, excitement, action, idleness if you will, to steady plodding business ways. 1871, Sir Edward Robert Sullivan, The Froth and the Dregs, page 112
   I do not think that there were in the boxes or the lower part of the house a score of persons who were not identified, in one way or another, with this froth of New York society. 1899 September, James L. Ford, “The Froth of New York Society”, in Munsey's Magazine, volume 21, number 6, page 954
   Voltaire says that the population of England is like her ale: at the top there is nothing but froth; at the bottom there is nothing but dregs; but between these extremes all is excellent. 1908, Lionel Arthur Tollemache, Old and Odd Memories, page 104
   So, as we said, he paints the froth of society; and very gay froth it is, and very pretty bubbles he can make of it; but this is not reconciling classes, or giving a philosophic representation in fection of the great organic being we call the English nation; and so far as My Novel pretends to be anything more than a well-wrought story, constructed out of the old Bulwer-Lytton materials, the pretence is fabuous and the performance does not answer to it. 2016, David Skilton, The Early and Mid-Victorian Novel, page 97
4. (business) Highly speculative investment.
   Efforts of this kind, spurred on to fever heat by tax incentives can only generate inflationary froth - not real hard investment. 1966, United States Congress House Committee on Ways and Means, Legislative History of H.R. 17607, 89th Congress, page 1329
   In effect Friedman and Scwartz are not blaming the Fed for creating asset market inflation (and as we have seen, this concept should include the empowerment of irrational forces across asset markets including the giant carry trades) by its polices through 1927 and earlier; but they are admitting that there could have been some degree of US stock market "froth" in 1928 onwards (into 1929( (in any case, Friedman and Scwartz do not explicitly refer to the concept of asset price inflation). 2018, Brendan Brown, The Case Against 2 Per Cent Inflation, page 179
   There are very clearly signs of late-cycle froth in financial markets, everything from equities, to corporate credit, and real estate, especially in the US and, as a result, the risk of an overdue correction rises by the day. 2019, Joe Valente, Random Notes From A World Gone Wrong, page 86
   Froth is what agitates and powers the market, and there are six catalysts that have accelerated market froth, as shown in figure I.2. 2022, Kelly J. Frank, To the Moon Investing, page 5

verb

1. (transitive) To create froth in (a liquid).
   I like to froth my coffee for ten seconds exactly.
2. (intransitive) (of a liquid) To bubble.
   Colder and louder blew the wind, A gale from the Northeast, The snow fell hissing in the brine, And the billows frothed like yeast. 1842, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Wreck of the Hesperus, lines 21–4
   English beer, along with European brews, is already the subject of an EEC investigation to determine whether additives like stabilizers (used to prevent frothing during shipment) should be allowed. 19 February 1973, “Black Day in Brussels”, in Time
3. (transitive) To spit, vent, or eject, as froth.
4. (intransitive) (literally) To spew saliva as froth; (figuratively) to rage, vent one's anger.
   The clumsy suckling struck out with her still soft claws, opened her frothing mouth until her milk teeth shone. 1958, Nikos Kazantzakis, translated by Kimon Friar, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, London: Secker and Warburg, published 1938, Book XIII
   As doctors tried in vain to save April's right eye, news stories frothed at her assailant. He was “fiendish” (the Examiner), “sadistic” (the News-Call Bulletin), “probably a sexual psychopath” (the Chronicle). 25 April 1962, “Riding Crime's Crest”, in Time
5. (transitive) To cover with froth.
   A horse froths his chain.