soap
/soʊp/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.18 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A metallic salt derived from a fatty acid, commonly used in cleaning products.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
Some other substance, often a detergent or another surfactant, able to mix with both oil and water, used for cleaning.
Countable; Informal; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "I tried washing my hands with soap, but the stain wouldn't go away."
- "She went to the shop to buy soap, but they had run out."
- "Be sure to soap yourself well before rinsing."
- "Those kids soaped my windows!"
- "'Time? Doesn't have much meaning when they're trying to dry you out. I rather think they gave me a shot of soap at one point.' Soap is intelligence speak for sodium pentathol."
- "The specified system will use SOAP for message exchange."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *seyb-? Proto-Germanic *saipǭ Proto-West Germanic *saipā Old English sāpe Middle English sope English soap From Middle English sope, sape, from Old English sāpe (“soap, salve”), from Proto-West Germanic *saipā, from Proto-Germanic *saipǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *seyb-, *seyp- (“to pour out, drip, trickle, strain”). Cognate with Scots saip, sape (“soap”), Saterland Frisian Seepe (“soap”), West Frisian sjippe (“soap”), Dutch zeep (“soap”), German Low German Seep (“soap”), German Seife (“soap”), Danish sæbe (“soap”), Swedish såpa (“soap”), Norwegian Bokmål såpe (“soap”), Norwegian Nynorsk såpe (“soap”), Faroese sápa (“soap”), Icelandic sápa (“soap”), Finnish saippua (“soap”), Finnish suopa (“soft soap”). Related also to Old English sāp (“amber, resin, pomade, unguent”), Latin sēbum (“tallow, fat, grease”). See seep. Latin sāpō (“soap”) is a borrowing from the Germanic.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /soʊp/
- British English: /səʊp/