Bubble

How to spell bubble

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bubble

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bubble mean?

1. nounA thin, rounded pocket of air or gas, usually surrounded by liquid or a film of soap.
2. verbTo form or rise in bubbles, or to make a gentle gurgling sound.
3. nounA period when prices rise far above real value before suddenly collapsing.

Bubble in a sentence

• noun

  A single bubble rose slowly through the glass of sparkling water.

• verb

  The sauce began to bubble gently at the edges of the pan.

• noun

  Analysts warned that the housing bubble would eventually burst.

• noun

  The child watched each soap bubble drift across the garden.

• verb

  You could hear the stream bubble over the smooth stones.

• noun

  Many investors lost everything when the dot-com bubble collapsed.

Where does bubble come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Bubble is one of those words that English seems to have built straight from sound: it is largely imitative, echoing the soft popping noise that a little dome of gas makes as it rises and breaks. It appears in Middle English around the late 1300s, and most likely owes something to similar words in Dutch and Low German, such as the Middle Dutch bobbel, which named the same thing. The repeated 'b' and the frequentative ending '-le' both suggest a small action happening again and again, the way bubbles keep forming on the surface of boiling water. Over the centuries the meaning widened from the literal pocket of air to figurative uses, including the eighteenth-century 'speculative bubble' for a swollen, unstable financial scheme, named after the South Sea Bubble. The doubled 'b' and the silent visual weight of '-ble' are the small traps for spellers, even though the word feels familiar.

How the word is built

• bubble (imitative root suggesting a rounded pocket of air)
• -le (frequentative suffix indicating repeated small action)