LEAVEN • E-FREE TRANSLATION.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

... were the overflow of a redundant population; the great and the wealthy are never redundant!—the mass would thus ordinarily be composed of the discontented and the poor, and even where the aristocratic leaven was most strong, it was still the aristocracy of some defeated and humbled faction. So that in the average equality of the emigrators were the seeds of a new constitution; and if they transplanted the form of monarchy, it already contained the ...

— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... differently from all this or at least, quite unprepared to make this whole-hearted profession of faith, is yet his brother in Christ, in whom the knowledge of Christ that he has will work and work, the new leaven casting out the old leaven until he, too, in the revelation of the Father, shall come to the perfect stature of the fulness of Christ. Meantime, Paul, the Apostle, must show due reverence to the halting and dull disciple. He must and will make no demand upon him on the grounds ...

— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald

... fall, a leaven was working. Mary's mismatched eyes held a tranquillity of quiet self-satisfaction. She had found somewhere a second fashion magazine and often when she was alone in the little room under the eaves she snipped industriously ...

— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... saying how long this state of things might have endured. But, happily, it was not left to itself. Even earlier than the thirteenth century, the development of Moorish civilization in Spain and the great movement of the Crusades had introduced the leaven which, from that day to this, has never ceased to work. At first, through the intermediation of Arabic translations, afterwards by the study of the originals, the western nations of Europe became acquainted with the writings ...

— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... and caught Gladys's in a warm clasp. She fell asleep soon after that and did not waken again during the night, but Gladys sat beside her until morning, watching her slightest movement. And the Camp Fire leaven was beginning to work in her, and she was learning to fulfil the Law, ...

— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

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