The term soap has multiple meanings:

• Soap is a cleaning mixture used for personal or minor cleaning and which usually comes in a bar or a cake.
• Soap is any fatty acid salt, some of which have cleaning (see above) applications, and some others of which have lubricant, anticaking, cosmetic, or other uses. Formula: RCOOM, where R is a fatty moiety and M is a cation.
• Soap is also a colloquial term for any of many detergents, whether or not they are made of soap in the sense above.
• SOAP, formerly an acronym of Simple Object Access Protocol, is a computer standard defining a message format used by web services.
• There was a controversial 1970s sitcom called Soap, starring Katherine Helmond and Cathryn Damon.
• S.O.A.P. a.k.a. Soap is a Danish singer duo.
• Soap is also a colloquial term for a soap opera.

When used as an acronym, SOAP might denote one of the following expansions:

• Society for Obstetric Anesthesia and Perinatology
• The subjective, objective, assessment, plan approach to high dependency medicine and charting
• The IBM 650's Symbolic Optimal Assembly Program
• The Aerospace Corporation 's Satellite Orbit Analysis Program .
• The US Small Operator Assistance Program of aid to small mines.