LEAVEN • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Leaven

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/lˈɛvən/ Listen

verb

Leaven v. t. (past & past part. leavened; pres. part. leavening)

To make light by the action of leaven; to cause to ferment. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump."

To imbue; to infect; to vitiate. "With these and the like deceivable doctrines, he leavens also his prayer."

noun

Leaven n.

Any substance that produces, or is designed to produce, fermentation, as in dough or liquids; esp., a portion of fermenting dough, which, mixed with a larger quantity of dough, produces a general change in the mass, and renders it light; yeast; barm.

Anything which makes a general assimilating (especially a corrupting) change in the mass. "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy."

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Etymology of 'Leaven'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Leaven" Quotes from Famous Books

... his shoulders. He, also, was a busy man and having finished his visit to his patient did not prolong it. He picked up his hat, remarked that he "didn't doubt so clever a young man could find a fitting place, if he gave what was left of his mind to it," and bowed himself out, leaving the leaven of his sensible advice ...

— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond

... sublime in many respects as it was, had its strong leaven of human imperfection in that very self-dependence which was born of his reason and his pride. In resting so solely on man's perceptions of the right, he lost one attribute of the true hero—faith. We do not mean that word in the religious sense alone, but in the more ...

— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... evolving the phantoms of an airy unreality from the bottomless abyss of his own so-called consciousness. Fortunately for humanity, the low-class unimaginative mind predominates in the world, as far as numbers are concerned; and there are enough true intellects among men to leaven the whole. The middle class of mind is a small class, congregated together chiefly within the boundaries of a very amusing institution calling itself "society." These people have scraped and varnished the aforesaid composition of imagination, ...

— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford

... And why? What could betray intelligent and educated men, persons esteemed wise in their generation, into an attempt which amazes the civilized world, and at which posterity will be appalled? We answer, it was the old leaven which has worked always industriously in the breast of man since the creation—AMBITION. Corrupted by the idea that a model republic must have slavery for its basis, knowing that the free States could not much longer tolerate ...

— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... her head full of furniture, Lady Clonbrony retired. "I go to my business, Colambre: and I leaven you to ...

— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

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