Definition of "froth"
froth
noun
countable and uncountable, plural froths
Quotations
He replaced her again breadthwise on the couch, unable to sit up, with her thighs open, between which I could observe a kind of white liquid, like froth, hanging about the outward lips of that recently opened wound, which now glowed with a deeper red.
1749, [John Cleland], “(Please specify the letter or volume)”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], London: […] G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […]
(figuratively) unimportant or insubstantial talk, events, or actions; drivel
Quotations
The want of a good book is not felt till a good book is published—then all the world is dying to read it; but if the public, looking for good books, finds nothing but froth, froth, trash, trash, flummery, and mummery—things that have been said a thousand times before said a thousand times worse than ever—thoughts from those who think not, and who cannot think what thinking is—tales from those who have not heads—observations from those who observe not,—it grows disgusted, and rejects reading altogether.
1832 April, “A Tête à Tête with Mr. Tait”, in Tait's Edinburgh magazine, number 1, page 10
Their new standards, their environmental regulations, their laws, their estimates, their rates, their interest, their conclustions, their judicial appeals, their reminders and their claims, their hypocritical legal decisions to save a planet that had already been bled dry – froth, froth, nothing but froth.
2010, Anna Gavalda, Consolation, page 369
Quotations
That it offers the best imaginable field for the economical employment of the least useful of our population, viz. "the froth and the dregs,” those of both extremes of the social scale who prefer adventure, excitement, action, idleness if you will, to steady plodding business ways.
1871, Sir Edward Robert Sullivan, The Froth and the Dregs, page 112
So, as we said, he paints the froth of society; and very gay froth it is, and very pretty bubbles he can make of it; but this is not reconciling classes, or giving a philosophic representation in fection of the great organic being we call the English nation; and so far as My Novel pretends to be anything more than a well-wrought story, constructed out of the old Bulwer-Lytton materials, the pretence is fabuous and the performance does not answer to it.
2016, David Skilton, The Early and Mid-Victorian Novel, page 97
(business) Highly speculative investment.
Quotations
In effect Friedman and Scwartz are not blaming the Fed for creating asset market inflation (and as we have seen, this concept should include the empowerment of irrational forces across asset markets including the giant carry trades) by its polices through 1927 and earlier; but they are admitting that there could have been some degree of US stock market "froth" in 1928 onwards (into 1929( (in any case, Friedman and Scwartz do not explicitly refer to the concept of asset price inflation).
2018, Brendan Brown, The Case Against 2 Per Cent Inflation, page 179
verb
third-person singular simple present froths, present participle frothing, simple past and past participle frothed
(transitive) To create froth in (a liquid).
Quotations
One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out.
1859, Charles Dickens, “Book Two, Chapter 7”, in A Tale of Two Cities, London: Chapman and Hall, […]