: frothy, foamy
Example sentence:
"Beat egg whites until foamy," the directions said, and
Frank beat them until they were splendidly spumescent.
Did you know?
"Spume," from Latin "spuma," 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 the following quotation
from 14th-century English poet John Gower: "She set a caldron on
the fire . . . and let it boil in such a plight, till that she
saw the spume [was] white." "Spumescent" joined the older
adjectives "spumous" and "spumy," which also mean "foamy" or
"frothy," in the mid-1800s, but it has remained rare.
Etymologists aren't positive whether it was adopted directly from
the Latin adjective "spumescens," or whether it's simply an
instance, like "alkalescent," of adding the suffix "-escent" to a
noun to create an adjective.
