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Spume is a word for froth or foam that has been a part of the English lexicon for more than 600 years. An early example is found in a 14th-century quotation from the English poet John Gower: "She set a cauldron on the fire … and let it boil in such a plight, till that she saw the spume [was] white." "Spume" was borrowed from Anglo-French espume or "spume," and can be traced further back to Latin spuma. "Spuma" is also akin to Old English "fām," a word that is the ancestor of the modern English "foam," a synonym of "spume." Another relative of "spuma" is "pumex," the Latin word for pumice, a volcanic rock with a somewhat foamy appearance that is formed from a rapidly cooling, frothy lava.
Examples of spume in a Sentence
Douglas Stuart, New Yorker, 12 Apr. 2026
But for all those currents to crash together in a great spume of music and emotion on December 18, 1962, artists and audiences required a special room, the basic apparatus of togetherness in Europe’s musical tradition.
—Justin Davidson, Curbed, 16 Oct. 2024
The rasp, first pressed into the ice block, tense as a spring, suddenly surfs across the berg, scraping up a spume of glittering white snow as stray flecks flutter into the air.
—Ethan Pan, Outside Online, 23 May 2024
The water’s edge was frothed into a pink spume - evidence, Kolya speculated, that the artemia were spawning.
—Henry Wismayer, Anchorage Daily News, 30 Aug. 2022
The water’s edge was frothed into a pink spume — evidence, Kolya speculated, that the artemia were spawning.
—Henry Wismayer, Washington Post, 29 Aug. 2022
Standing on these beaches creates a sense of natural infinity – of white sand, of frothy spume, of blue-green water.
—Angelina Villa-Clarke, Forbes, 18 Mar. 2021
In the intervening seven decades, the event has developed from a small sports-car show and race into a weeklong car-and-lifestyle bacchanal that blankets the Monterey Peninsula in plumes of blue smoke and champagne spume.
—Brett Berk, Car and Driver, 2 Mar. 2018
Cite this Entry
“Spume.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spume. Accessed 14 Jun. 2026.
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