soap

Pluralsoaps

Formssoaps, soaping, soaped

1. 1
   nouncountable or uncountable

   A metallic salt of a fatty acid, used in many cleaning products.

   Traditional soap forms when animal fat reacts with sodium hydroxide.

   Hard water can make soap less effective at cleaning.

   Note

   The chemist's soap is a precise thing: usually a sodium or potassium salt, made by saponification, in which a fat reacts with an alkali and leaves glycerol behind. The word itself is old. Old English sāpe meant both "soap" and "salve." The strict sense draws a line that everyday speech ignores, since the broader cleaning sense happily covers detergents that are not soaps at all.

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To apply soap to something in the process of washing it.

   He soaped the car thoroughly before hosing it down.

   Always soap your hands for at least twenty seconds.

   Similarlather

3. 3
   nouncolloquialcountable

   An ongoing television or radio drama serial, broadcast in regular episodes and following a continuing storyline.

   Millions of viewers tuned in to the long-running soap each evening.

   The actor got his start on a daytime soap before moving into film.

   Similarserial

4. 4
   verbcolloquialtransitive

   To cover or smear something with soap, often as a prank.

   Teenagers soaped the school windows the night before graduation.

   They threatened to soap every window on the street.

5. 5
   nouncolloquialcountable or uncountable

   A detergent or other surfactant able to mix with both oil and water, used for cleaning, even when it is not a true soap.

   Most bathroom soap today is actually a synthetic detergent rather than a true fatty-acid salt.

   A few drops of soap let the water spread across the greasy surface.

   Similardetergent, cleanser

   Note

   Everyday speech stretches the word to any cleaner that behaves the way soap does. What qualifies is the molecule's double nature: one end clings to oil and the other to water. This lowers surface tension and lifts grease into suspension so it rinses away. Much of what is sold and asked for as soap is really a synthetic detergent, and outside a lab nobody minds.

6. 6
   nounslangcountable or uncountable

   Money, especially money used as a bribe.

   A bit of soap in the right pocket got the permit approved overnight.

   He claimed the official wouldn't move without some soap changing hands.

   Similargrease, bribe

   Note

   Slang that pictures a bribe as a lubricant: money that lets an awkward deal slide through. It usually works as a mass noun (some soap, a bit of soap) and belongs in knowing talk about graft rather than neutral writing. There, bribe or payoff says the same thing without the wink.

7. 7
   nouncountable

   A brick or masonry unit made shallower or shorter than the standard size.

   The mason cut a soap to finish the course neatly against the window frame.

   Builders order soaps when a wall needs a thinner finishing course.

8. 8
   verbcolloquialtransitive

   To keep a topic quiet and avoid discussing it openly.

   The committee soaped the scandal until after the election.

   Reporters were asked to soap the details for security reasons.

   Similardownplay, soft-pedal

   Oppositepublicize

9. 9
   nounslanguncountable

   Thiopental sodium, a fast-acting barbiturate used in anesthesia and popularly regarded as a truth serum.

   Interrogators in the thriller injected the captive with soap.

   She joked that only a dose of soap would get him to confess.

   Note

   This is an unrelated word that only looks like the cleaning one. It is probably a clipping of sodium pentothal. John Gardner's James Bond novels call it intelligence speak, and it belongs to the world of interrogation: a shot of soap given to make a captive talk. Its fame as a truth serum is far stronger than the pharmacology behind it.

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