Word.ws English Dictionary

afoam

/əˈfoʊm/

afoam adjective: in a foaming state; producing foam.

Adjective

afoam (not comparable)

  1. In a foaming state; producing foam.
    • The sea is all afoam.
    • MacTurk, being summoned, came with steed afoam.1849, Charlotte Brontë, chapter 15, in Shirley, volume 2, Leipzig: Tauchnitz, page 305
  2. Covered or filled (with something foaming or resembling foam).
    • mighty horns of ale, and cups of gold afoam / With strong nut-coloured mead1896, John Todhunter, “The Fate of the Sons of Usna”, in Three Irish Bardic Tales,, London: J.M.Dent, page 112
    • The garden was afoam with starry white cosmos backed by the stately phalanx of the Prince’s Feather.1933, Lucy Maud Montgomery, chapter 32, in Pat of Silver Bush, Toronto: McClelland and Stewart

Adverb

afoam (not comparable)

  1. In a foaming state.

Examples of afoam in a sentence

  • “Well, this old great-grandfather [whale], with the white head and hump, runs all afoam into the pod, and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line.”1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “'”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London...
  • a tugboat hauling barges, its bow afoam pushing its way through the ripples and waves1998, J. P. Donleavy, Wrong Information Is Being Given Out at Princeton,, London: Little, Brown, page 73:

Origin of afoam

From a- + foam.

Questions about afoam

What does afoam mean?
Afoam means in a foaming state; producing foam.
How do you use afoam in a sentence?
“Well, this old great-grandfather [whale], with the white head and hump, runs all afoam into the pod, and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line.”
What part of speech is afoam?
Afoam can be an adjective or an adverb.
How do you pronounce afoam?
Afoam is pronounced /əˈfoʊm/.

Words near afoam in the dictionary

  1. AFMA
  2. AFMs
  3. AFN
  4. AFNs
  5. AFO
  6. afoam
  7. afocal
  8. Afognak
  9. AFOL
  10. Afolabi
  11. Afolabis

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: afoam (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “afoam.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/afoam. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.