Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Soapy water.
- n. Foam; lather.
- n. Slang Beer.
- v. To wash in suds.
- v. To form or make suds.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Water impregnated with soap, forming a frothy mass; a lixivium of soap and water.
- The foam or spray churned up by a wounded whale; White water.
- In the suds, in turmoil or difficulty; in distress.
- A manufacturers' name for various waste soap-liquors incidentally produced in the industries of wool- and silk-scouring, -bleaching, -dyeing, etc. These were formerly allowed to run off into river-courses, but, in view of their polluting effect on the water, measures are now adopted to at least partially prevent this pollution and recover some material of value from the suds. See Yorkshire grease, sake, 2, and sudcake.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. Water impregnated with soap, esp. when worked up into bubbles and froth.
WordNet 3.0
- v. wash in suds
- v. make froth or foam and become bubbly
- n. the froth produced by soaps or detergents
- n. a dysphemism for beer (especially for lager that effervesces)
Etymologies
- Perhaps from obsolete Dutch zudse, marsh, from Middle Dutch sudse. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The new king of inexpensive, yet tasty, suds is the Chili Parlor, located in the Coca-Cola Food Court (which is just to the east of Big Tex and adjacent to the SkyWay tram).”
“Round glittering arms, plunged elbow-deep in suds,”
“House-boat, and I judge from the condition of what, for want of a better term, I may call the suds, when she left us the House-boat was making ten knots a day.”
“But this form of deafness may be easily cured, even though it has existed for years; for, having softened the accumulations of viscid wax by dropping animal oil into the ear, they may be removed by the injection of warm soap-suds, which is an effectual and safe remedy.”
Popular Education For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes
“After this, the water which remains, is still useful, for washing floors; and then, the suds is a good manure to put around plants.”
A Treatise on Domestic Economy For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School
“It was called suds and suds or something like that.”
“The only thing flowing more than the suds were the stories.”
“Chinamen began to drift into the rolls, there appeared such names as Carmen Wah Chang, cooks and waitresses living in darksome back cupboards must be unearthed, negro shoemakers were caught at their stands on the sidewalks, shiny - haired bartenders gave up their biographies in nasal monosyllables amid the slop of "suds" and the scrape of celluloid froth - eradicators.”
Zone Policeman 88; a close range study of the Panama canal and its workers
“I still do have bubbly pee, but not as much "suds" anymore.”
“I can't give a good reason for the lack of "suds" on tap or in bottles.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘suds’.
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Beer and Brewing
Words about beer and the making of it.
airlock, bung, carboy, diversol, hops, mashtun, beer, sparge, trub, wort, malt, malt liquor and 184 more...
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Lifehacking
Start with the effect, the what; signal-patch known-belief spirit. "Write my program, routine me." New cue vs brand loyalty. Ritual Ceremony Design Technologies, Inc.
confusion, misdirection, fractionation, disequilibrium, relaxation, repetition, impassioned, intensity, suddenly, shock, concentration, focus and 118 more...
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Pluralia Tantum
Nouns that are common in plural form but are non-existent or rarely used in singular form.
scissors, thanks, clothes, remains, tights, trousers, pants, news, billiards, means, mathematics, physics and 221 more...
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aliko's Words
deli, turkey, bodrum, deniz, sunny, seks, tatil, hava, zeeman, captain, kapitein, kaptan and 256 more...
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Beer Words
Words having to do with beer.
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whaling terms
Terms defined in the glossary of Clifford W. Ashley's "Yankee Whaler".
advance, adze, after house, after oar, agent, air up, alow, ambergris, apeak, article, away, bailer and 299 more...
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foamy swills
pounce, pumice, foam, spume, souffle, scoria, tuff, meerschaum, sinter, cinder, spumescent, grumous and 28 more...
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Jazz
discoveries and oddities in Toni Morrison's Jazz (1992)
marcelling, kitty, fay, winterbound, slappable, tiptoer, dracena, doctor plant, deep-down, tonk, suds, citified and 21 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for suds.
whichbe Subjective Units of Disturbance Scale Jan 8, 2009
qroqqa When the customer comes and Violet is sudsing the thin gray hair . . .
Then sudses with all her heart those three or four ounces of gray hair, soft and interesting as a baby's.
—Toni Morrison, Jazz
A morphological oddity: the noun 'suds' was originally plural, but you'd still expect the derived verb to be made from the base 'sud'. However, we say 'suds' as a verb too. Dec 19, 2008