foam up

Verb

foam up (third-person singular simple present foams up, present participle foaming up, simple past and past participle foamed up)

1. (intransitive) To become foamy, create a foam; to rise with a foamy surface or covered with something resembling foam
   • In a chastened mood, Helen returned to her own room and lit her spirit-lamp, in order to re-boil the coffee. She was watching the brown bubbles foam up in the saucepan, when she heard the front-door bell.1933, Ethel Lina White, chapter 12, in Some Must Watch
   • […] valleys deep in a milk-white mist where a continual drip-drip allowed one to hear, rather than see, the enormous soft, and feathery leafage of the tree-ferns as it foamed up from the living fossils of the trunks.1961, Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Tristes Tropiques”, in John Russell, transl., Criterion, New York, published 1955, Part I, Chapter 3, p. 35
2. (figuratively, intransitive) To take place, arise, erupt, develop.
   • A tide of Republican scandal foamed up last week and engulfed Germany's greatest post-War soldier, Hans von Seeckt, “The Man with the Iron Monocle.”1926 October 18, “Portent Hatched”, in Time
   • […] Traveler had shown up looking for some suppositories to cure his bronchitis, and out of the explanation he had got from Talita love had foamed up like shampoo in a showerbath.1966, Julio Cortázar, chapter 37, in Gregory Rabassa, transl., Hopscotch, Pantheon, published 2014
3. (transitive) To cause to become foamy; to cover with foam.
   • As I routinely foamed up his grand lattes, he’d share details about his homicide cases (not to mention his rocky marriage, which was still bordering on divorce).2006, Cleo Coyle, chapter 2, in Murder Most Frothy, Penguin, page 22
   • Face foamed up, I flicked on the shaver before lowering it to my face, and allowed the blades to fizz and chug against my skin.2010 October 4, Oliver Pickup, “A Cut Above”, in The Daily Mail