Suds are the froth of soap on water. A bowl of suds, up to the elbows in suds, soapy suds.
It is plural only. More suds does not mean more cleaning: the foam is a side effect of the detergent rather than the thing that works, and low-foaming detergents clean as well or better. The word is related to seethe.
1nounsudsThe froth of soap on water.
“She washed the dishes in a sink full of hot suds.”
suds is a foam.
From an old word sud, a variant of sod, a boiling or bubbling. Seethe is a relative.
Built from
From the plural of sud, a variant of sod (“a bubbling or boiling”), equivalent to sud + s. Related to seethe.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA