a. Forms: 1 fámiȝ, fæmiȝ, 4–7 fomy, -ie, 6 foomy, Sc. famy, 7– foamy. [OE. fámiȝ, fæmiȝ, f. fám, FOAM.]

1

  1.  Covered with foam, full of foam, frothy.

2

a. 1000.  Riddles, iv. 19 (Gr.). Famiȝ winneð wæȝ wið wealle.

3

c. 1385.  Chaucer, L. G. W., 1208, Dido.

        The fomy brydil with the bit of gold
Gouernyth he ryght as hym self hath wold.

4

1513.  Douglas, Æneis, XII. vi. 151. The fomy mowthis of the haisty stedis.

5

1697.  Dryden, Virg. Georg., IV. 586.

        The slipp’ry God …
With foamy Tusks will seem a bristly Boar,
Or imitate the Lion’s angry Roar.

6

1748.  Warton, Enthusiast, 29.

        Yet let me choose some Pine-topt Precipice
Abrupt and shaggy, whence a foamy Stream,
Like Anio, tumbling roars.

7

1816.  W. Taylor, Azincour, in Monthly Mag, XLI. May, 331/1.

        And, where the bush to some hedge ale-house points,
They drain the foamy mug, and bench their weary joints.

8

1821.  D. M. Moir, November, in Six Sonnets, iv., in Blackw. Mag., X. Dec., 642.

        The wild waves curl their bleak and foamy heads;
  From the cold north the wind impatient raves;
  Tumultuous murmurs through the ocean caves
Ring dismal.

9

  2.  Consisting of, or of the nature of, foam; of, pertaining to, or resembling foam.

10

1398.  Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., IV. vi. (1495), 89. By medlynge of colera blood semyth redde … by flewme it semyth watry and fomy.

11

1601.  Holland, Pliny, II. 397. The foamie moisture that shel-snails yeeld, if childrens eies be anointed therewith, doth not onely rectifie and lay streight the hairs of the eie-lids which grow crooked into the eies, but also nourisheth & causeth them to grow.

12

1784.  Cowper, Task, VI. 155.

        Her silver globes, light as the foamy surf
That the wind severs from the broken wave.

13

1876.  Gilder, Poet & Master, 14, ‘A Song of Early Summer.’

        Before the foamy whitening
  Of the water below the mill;
Ere yet the summer lightning
  Shone red at the edge of the hill.

14

1881.  Mallock, Romance Nineteenth Cent., II. 196. It was a green vista of eucalyptus and of orange-trees, with here and there a cloud of foamy lilac-blossom; but its soft beauty did but fill Vernon with bitterness.

15

  Hence Foaminess.

16

1887.  Fenn, Devon Boys, xviii. 184. The wind was sinking fast, and the waves lost their fierce foaminess.

17