Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun plural Soapy water.
- noun plural Foam; lather.
- noun plural Slang Beer.
- intransitive verb To wash in suds.
- intransitive verb To form or make suds.
from The Century Dictionary.
- 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 .
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun plural Water impregnated with soap, esp. when worked up into bubbles and froth.
- noun plural [Colloq.] in turmoil or difficulty.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
lather ,foam
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb wash in suds
- verb make froth or foam and become bubbly
- noun the froth produced by soaps or detergents
- noun a dysphemism for beer (especially for lager that effervesces)
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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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).
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Round glittering arms, plunged elbow-deep in suds,
Aurora Leigh 1864
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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.
The Pursuit of the House-Boat Being Some Further Account of the Divers Doings of the Associated Shades, under the Leadership of Sherlock Holmes, Esq. John Kendrick Bangs 1892
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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 Ira Mayhew 1854
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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 Catharine Esther Beecher 1839
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It was called suds and suds or something like that.
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It was called suds and suds or something like that.
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The only thing flowing more than the suds were the stories.
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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 Harry Alverson Franck 1921
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I still do have bubbly pee, but not as much "suds" anymore.
qroqqa commented on the word suds
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.
December 19, 2008
whichbe commented on the word suds
Subjective Units of Disturbance Scale
January 8, 2009