ferment
/fɚˈmɛnt/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 2.85 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To react, using fermentation; especially to produce alcohol by aging or by allowing yeast to act on sugars; to brew.
verb
To stir up, agitate, cause unrest or excitement in.
noun
Something, such as a yeast or barm, that causes fermentation.
noun
A gentle internal motion of the constituent parts of a fluid; fermentation.
noun
A catalyst.
Example Sentences
- "The cleanup job would turn out to be possibly second only to body-recovery duty in terms of being a job that nobody wanted to get assigned to. Imagine, for a moment, a thick soup of oil, paper, ink, clothing, raw meat and other fresh provisions, and worse, that had all been left to collect together in semi-warm water, all enclosed in a large metal container that had then been subjected to heating by first fire and then repeated warm Hawaiian days, and then left to ferment for over a month, and then with most of the water drained away and all the remaining solid and semi-liquid mass collecting together in pools and heaps across multiple decks, still in a relatively-enclosed environment."
- "Ye vigorous swains! while youth ferments your blood."
- "Pleas'd have I wander'd thro' your rough domain; / Trod the pure virgin-ſnows, myſelf as pure; / Heard the winds roar, and the big torrent burſt; / Or ſeen the deep fermenting tempeſt brew'd, / In the grim evening ſky."
- "Subdue and cool the ferment of desire."
- "14 November, 1770, Junius, letter to the Right Honourable Lord Mansfield The nation is in a ferment."
- "Clad in a Persian-Renaissance gown and a widow's tiara of white batiste, Mrs Thoroughfare, in all the ferment of a Marriage-Christening, left her chamber on vapoury autumn day and descending a few stairs, and climbing a few others, knocked a trifle brusquely at her son's wife's door."
Etymology
From Middle English ferment, from Middle French ferment, from Latin fermentāre (“to leaven, ferment”), from fermentum (“substance causing fermentation”), possibly from contraction of *fervimentum, from fervēre. See also fervent.
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: ferment, fermentō
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /fɚˈmɛnt/
- British English: /fəˈmɛnt/
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Chemistry.