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Foment vs Ferment - What's the difference?

foment | ferment |

As verbs the difference between foment and ferment

is that foment is to incite or cause troublesome acts; to encourage; to instigate while ferment is to react, using fermentation; especially to produce alcohol by aging or by allowing yeast to act on sugars; to brew.

As a noun ferment is

something, such as a yeast or barm, that causes fermentation.

foment

English

Verb

(en verb)
  • To incite or cause troublesome acts; to encourage; to instigate.
    • He was arrested for fomenting a riot; after all, it's bad enough being in a riot but starting one is much worse.
  • (medicine) To apply a poultice to; to bathe with a cloth or sponge.
  • * 1904, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Abbey Grange , Norton (2005), page 1178,
    • The maid had entered with us, and began once more to foment the bruise upon her mistress's brow.

    Derived terms

    * fomentation

    ferment

    English

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To react, using fermentation; especially to produce alcohol by aging or by allowing yeast to act on sugars; to brew.
  • To stir up, agitate, cause unrest or excitement in.
  • * Alexander Pope
    • Ye vigorous swains! while youth ferments your blood.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Something, such as a yeast or barm, that causes fermentation.
  • A state of agitation or of turbulent change.
  • * Rogers
    • Subdue and cool the ferment of desire.
  • * Walpole
    • The nation is in a ferment .
  • A gentle internal motion of the constituent parts of a fluid; fermentation.
  • * Thomson
    • Down to the lowest lees the ferment ran.
  • A catalyst.

    • Quotations

    ; state of agitation * 1919, , Duckworth, hardback edition, page 104 *: 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.

    See also

    * foment

    References

    * * * (Fermentation)

    Anagrams

    * ----