bubble

1. 1.

   a hollow globule of gas (e.g., air or carbon dioxide)

   Broaderglobule

   Narrowerair bubblefoamsoap bubble
2. 2.

   a speculative scheme that depends on unstable factors that the planner cannot control

   “his proposal was nothing but a house of cards”

   “a real estate bubble”

   Synonymshouse of cards

   Broaderscheme
3. 3.

   an impracticable and illusory idea

   “he didn't want to burst the newcomer's bubble”

   Broaderillusion
4. 4.

   a dome-shaped covering made of transparent glass or plastic

   Broadercovering

Other forms of bubble

plural

bubbles·

past tense

bubbled·

present participle

bubbling·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about bubble

What does bubble mean?

bubble means "form, produce, or emit bubbles". That is the primary sense; the word has 9 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in bubble?

bubble has 2 syllables: bub-ble. The stress falls on "bub". In IPA it is /ˈbʌbəl/.

What is another word for bubble?

Close synonyms include ripple, babble, guggle, burble, gurgle. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is bubble a common word?

bubble is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.