Word.ws English Dictionary

lathery

/ˈlæðəɹi/

lathery adjective: resembling or covered in lather.

Adjective

lathery (comparative more lathery, superlative most lathery)

  1. Resembling or covered in lather.
    • This new shaving cream isn't as lathery as the old stuff: there just aren't as many bubbles to be had.
    • Thus rapidly my little tale advances,
      And now we come to him, who lives to shave!
      The lathery Knight of Razors, not of lances,
      And without question more a fool than knave.1824, James Atkinson, “Peer Mahommud; The Moralist,” stanza 51, in The City of Palaces, Calcutta: Government Gazette Press, p. 128
    Synonyms:
    foamy, frothy

Examples of lathery in a sentence

  • You put the boiled soap in the hot water and make it all frothy-lathery—and then you shake the muslin and squeeze it, ever so gently, and all the dirt comes out. […]”1906, E. Nesbit, chapter 7, in The Railway Children:
  • They wash their clothes in running streams with lathery weeds—too poor to buy soap.1931, Langston Hughes, “People without Shoes”, in I Wonder As I Wander, New York: Hill and Wang, published 1993, page 28:
  • He cleaned up the basin and flushed the lathery, hairy bits of toilet paper down the water closet.1957, James Agee, A Death in the Family, New York: Bantam, Part 1, Chapter 2, p. 26:

Synonyms of lathery

Forms of lathery

comparativemore lathery
superlativemost lathery

Origin of lathery

From lather + -y.

Questions about lathery

What does lathery mean?
Lathery means resembling or covered in lather.
How do you use lathery in a sentence?
You put the boiled soap in the hot water and make it all frothy-lathery—and then you shake the muslin and squeeze it, ever so gently, and all the dirt comes out. […]”
What part of speech is lathery?
Lathery is an adjective.
How do you pronounce lathery?
Lathery is pronounced /ˈlæðəɹi/.

Words near lathery in the dictionary

  1. Latheronwheel
  2. lathers
  3. lathers up
  4. Latherses
  5. latherwort
  6. lathery
  7. lathes
  8. lathesman
  9. lathesmen
  10. lathework
  11. lathi

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lathery (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-lathery.wav.

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