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Leavening   Listen
noun
Leavening  n.  
1.
The act of making light, or causing to ferment, by means of leaven.
2.
That which leavens or makes light.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Leavening" Quotes from Famous Books



... she tramped she was conning over her present plans. Again she saw the cabin at home in that pitchy black which precedes the first leavening of dawn, and herself getting up to start early on the long walk. Her mother would get up too, and that was foolish. She saw the slight figure stooping to rake together the embers in the broad chimney's throat that the coffee-pot might be set on. She remonstrated with the little mother, saying ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... Nevertheless, in loving this girl the finest and highest instincts of his nature had been aroused. He had felt for her even more of sentiment than of passion. When a man loves a girl whose mental purity is as absolute as her physical, there is, intermingled with his love, a leavening quality of reverence, and the result is a certain purification of his own nature. That Dartmouth had found himself capable of such a love had been a source of keenest gratification to him. He had been lifted to a spiritual level which he had ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... whole, and replaced the severed political bond as well as the dulled racial instinct, which is bound to go on losing in keenness in proportion to the degree of removal from primitive conditions and native soil. In our days, when the liberal movements leavening the whole of mankind, if they have not completely shattered the religious consciousness, have at least, in an important section of Jewry, effected a change in its form; when abrupt differences of opinion with regard to questions of faith and cult are asserting their ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow

... in their actualization, Brook Farm ideas remain. They charm philosophers, poets and statesmen. They work quietly, leavening the social mass. One must be in sympathy with them to know how potent is their action and how with a touch of the old enthusiasm they will be found breaking out again in larger and larger circles of humanity, for in view of the progress of mechanism, science and art in the last fifty ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... great objection to the use of soda alone as a leavening agent. After baking soda has lost its carbon dioxide gas, it is no longer baking soda, but is transformed into its relative, washing soda, which has a disagreeable taste and is by no ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... however, went by, and the civilized world had not yet put its civil and political institutions in accord with its spiritual faith. The Christian Church was all this time leavening human society and patiently awaiting the promised fermentation. This came at last, and it came in America. It came in a first manifestation through the Declaration of Independence; it came in a second and final manifestation through President ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... expectation of luminous instruction. She was used to being a law to herself, but she knew what she might and might not do, so that she was rather a by-law. She was the kind of girl that might have fancies for artists and poets, but might end by marrying a prosperous broker, and leavening a vast lump of moneyed and fashionable life with her culture, generosity, and good-will. The intellectual interests were first with her, but she might be equal to sacrificing them; she had the best heart, but she might know how to harden ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... wont. True, it is not pleasant to consider these distressing matters; but is it the business of the Christian to avoid that which is unpleasant? Consideration leads to sympathy, and sympathy wonderfully quickens the inventive faculties; and the aroused intellect and active affection are leavening forces that alter social ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks

... crowds, as he sung and prayed and talked "of Jesus and his dying love." After more than five weeks' continuance, the services closed. Scores were converted, many valuable additions were made to the Church, Christians were renewed and developed in piety of heart and life, and the leavening and saving power of the Gospel was extended through the town ...
— There is No Harm in Dancing • W. E. Penn

... first to make a substantial advance upon his theory, was born more than a century after him. Only two or three men appeared in a generation who, working alone, could make real progress in discovery, and even these could do little in leavening the minds of their ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... life away in a green-embowered village that follows the horseshoe curve of its bijou harbour. They are mostly Spanish and Indian mestizos, with a shading of San Domingo Negroes, a lightening of pure-blood Spanish officials and a slight leavening of the froth of three or four pioneering white races. No steamers touch at Ratona save the fruit steamers which take on their banana inspectors there on their way to the coast. They leave Sunday newspapers, ice, quinine, bacon, watermelons and vaccine ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... like windiness, bombast or prolonged moralizing; that it refuses to be bullied; and that it can usually be won by the light touch and a little appeal to its sporting instinct. It is the little leavening in the bread which makes all the difference in its ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... says about the little leaven leavening the whole lump." Jerry spoke with sudden seriousness. "Maybe Phil and Barbara will turn out to be the particular kind of leaven the freshies need. I suppose they wouldn't feel especially complimented at being classed as a 'lump,' but then what they don't ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... fought hard to keep down that little leavening of self which constitutes our very identity. Under the cold impassive vigour he was so determined to preserve, he registered many a noble vow of fortitude and abnegation on behalf of the friend he valued, of the woman he loved. Sometimes a pang would shoot through him ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... however of the religious movement lay rather among the middle and professional classes than among the gentry; and it is in a Puritan of this class that we find the fullest and noblest expression of the new influence which was leavening the temper of the time. John Milton is not only the highest but the completest type of Puritanism. His life is absolutely contemporaneous with his cause. He was born when it began to exercise a direct ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green

... fermentation, are in modern practice adopted in the preparation of bread; but by whatever means channels may be opened for the admission of heat to every particle of the dough, the result is practically the same as that which is obtained by leavening. The operator converts the mass of solid dough into swollen, light, porous, spongy leaven, by introducing into it a small quantity of matter already in a state of fermentation. It is the nature of that substance or principle to infect the portion that lies next it; and thus, if the contiguous matter ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... together in the prayer-meeting when Peter began to hammer at the door. Neither woman thought now of the unnatural, unwholesome relation which had formerly bound them. In God's good time, and by the slow process of leavening society with Christian ideas, that diabolical institution perished in Christian lands. Violent reformation of immoralities is always a blunder. 'Raw haste' is 'half-sister to delay.' Settlers in forest lands have found that it is endless ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... Hilda answered, "as to his direct influence; but don't you think, indirectly, he is leavening England? A man so wholly out of tune with the prevailing note of English life could only affect it, of course, by means of disciples and popularisers—often even popularisers who but dimly and distantly apprehend his meaning. He must be interpreted to ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... do a thing better than any one else—your services will always be in demand and you will surely be a leader in your line of work. Calumet Baking Powder is sold at a moderate price—has more than the usual leavening strength—and NEVER fails. ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... electricity of a body by the approach of a charged body to it, without interchange of electrical conditions between the two bodies. But an analogy is not an explanation, and why a few drops of yeast should change a saccharine mixture to carbonic acid and alcohol,—a little leaven leavening the whole lump,—not by combining with it, but by setting a movement at work, we not only cannot explain, but the fact is such an exception to the recognized laws of combination that Liebig is unwilling to admit the new force at all to which Berzelius had given the name ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... alone radical change is made possible, there set in an era of reaction consequent upon the French Revolution, the excesses of which involved in one universal discredit all the more liberal ideas that were leavening ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... merriment, but they also descend gloomily at other times into the valleys of dreariness. But the man who is in earnest is generally neither merry nor dreary. He has not time to be either. The early Christians, engaged in leavening the world, had no time for levity or listlessness. A pioneer cannot be humorous. But now that the world is leavened and Christian principles are theoretically, if not practically, taken for granted, a new range of qualities comes in sight. By humour I do not mean ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... hope to speak more fully on this subject; and in concluding this lecture, I will remark that English politics need a leavening influence which will counteract the evil tendencies and corrupt theories which, in spite of our advantageous social system, at present exist; and this leavening influence will be best produced by the admission of those into the ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson

... to accept the foregoing remarks or not, it is a plain fact that the Gospel is now in the world, fulfilling the same office towards mankind, which our Saviour CHRIST Himself fulfilled, and experiencing the same treatment at the hands of men in return. It is leavening society indeed, and remodelling the world, even while it is practically overlooked by politicians or experiencing evil treatment from them. It wins its way silently and secretly, yet surely; and it works miracles here and there. Moreover, it divides opinion; separating, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... Purified and refined by the precious discipline of adversity, the Jewish system, which Cyrus, feeling towards it a natural sympathy, protected, upheld, and replaced in its proper locality, advanced from this time in influence and importance, leavening little by little the foul mass of superstition and impurity which came in contact with it. Proselytism grew more common. The Jews spread themselves wider. The return from, the captivity, which Cyrus ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson

... moral ideas and the higher spirituality of teachers who have abandoned all churches, and who are systematically denounced as enemies of the souls of men. Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes! These transformations of religion by leavening elements contributed from a foreign doctrine, are the most interesting process in the ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley

... this period of hesitating progress and slow leavening of men's ideas that we have to pass through in this week's lecture. It always happens thus: the assimilation of great and new ideas is always a slow and gradual process: there is no haste either here or in any other department ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... He puts the dew of His blessing into the chalice of the tiniest flower, that it may 'share its dewdrop with another near.' Just as every particle of inert dough as it is leavened becomes in its turn leaven, and the medium for leavening the particle contiguous to it, so every Christian is bound, or, to use the metaphor of my text, is a debtor to God and man, to impart the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 'Greek and Barbarian,' says Paul, 'wise or unwise'; all distinctions ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... that the custom of leavening the dough by the addition of a ferment was not universally adopted amongst the ancients. For this reason, as the dough without leaven could only produce a heavy and indigestible bread, they were careful, ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... is this great result owing? How is this product of character, which is affecting the world's history, and gradually leavening the whole lump of humanity, to be accounted for? What power has originated it, or by what has it been sustained? Who are more entitled to give a reply to such questions than Christians themselves? They alone can know by what motives, they have been actuated, by what strength supported, ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... what that fellow has been saying to me?" demanded Miss Cringle, with a spice of the old temper leavening her voice once more. ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs

... there yet lingered in men's minds a feeling of uneasiness and regret that the Restoration of 1660 should have been followed by the ejection of so many deserving clergy; while the more eminent and cultured of the sufferers by it were leavening the whole Nonconformist body with principles and sentiments which belong rather to a National Church than to a detached sect; while Nonconformity among large bodies of Dissenters was not yet an established fact; while men of all parties were still rejoicing in the termination of civil ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... from China and Korea, as England did from continental Europe; but these two island realms have brought Asiatic and European civilization to their highest stage of development. Now the borrowers are making return with generous hand. The islands are reacting upon the continents. Japanese ideals are leavening the whole Orient from Manchuria to Ceylon. English civilization is the standard of Europe. "The Russian in his snows is aiming to be English," says Emerson. "England has inoculated all nations with ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... to put the bodies of their dead parents in the fields to fertilize them, and of a country such as Dickens has described; but these will not, I hope, be seen on the historic page to be truly the age or truly the America. A little leaven is leavening the ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... and legends out of such material as the Crusades, the Arthurian traditions, and the feats of Charlemagne. King John, with scarcely a quality which men cared to praise, was, strangely enough, fond of books and of scholars. A taste for learning was gradually leavening the barbarous Normanic lump, spreading downwards from monarch to people. Two years before John's death Roger Bacon was born, whose opus Majus embraced every branch of science, and whose life is the whole intellectual life of the thirteenth century. Matthew Paris, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... the zeal, energy, and general interest in progress exhibited by the English is to the natives around them an education worth all the book instruction we have imported into India. We cannot have too much of this leavening element, and the effects of it are everywhere apparent. It is extremely striking in the coffee districts, where many native planters have been, much improved as regards go, and a desire to adopt improvements, since Europeans have ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... Malcolm was fiercely resolved to plunge headlong into the commotion and compel his son to join him. And then calmer moments ensued; he could not forget those winter prayer meetings and the wonderful leavening effect they had had upon the community; nor could he forget Praying Donald's prophetic warnings that all strife and enmity must certainly bring retribution. No; he had forever put all feuds behind him, he finally decided, and if the MacDonalds were about to engage in strife with the Orangemen ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... wildness of nuts and meats men first reached the mildness and refinement of this diet, and travelling gradually down in my studies through that accidental souring of the dough which, it is supposed, taught the leavening process, and through the various fermentations thereafter, till I came to "good, sweet, wholesome bread," the staff of life. Leaven, which some deem the soul of bread, the spiritus which fills its cellular tissue, ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... family or society influence which would flow from these schools. Every class, yea, every girl in an out-going class, would be a missionary of thrift, industry, common-sense, and practicality. They would go forth, year by year, a leavening power into the houses, towns and villages of the Southern black population; girls fit to be the wives of the honest peasantry of the South, the worthy matrons ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various

... is the constantly increasing interest which it is such a pleasure to observe among Christians of all names in the order of the ritual year, in Christmas and Easter, Lent and Good-Friday—who can tell how much of this may not be due to the leavening influence of the Prayer Book, over and above what is effected by the public services of the Church? "I wonder," said a famous revivalist to a friend, a clergyman of our Church, "I wonder if you Episcopalians know what a good thing you have in that year ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington

... It may be objected, "These people can have been only the extremely ignorant." That, however, is my own conviction: but such childish assumptions were not the less prevalent for being preposterous, nor the less potent in leavening the mass of opinion, when the question ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... religion, and crowned by an enlightened, vigorously efficient, sensibly ambitious, and law-abiding citizenship, is "confirmation strong as proofs of Holy Writ" that the gospel of industry, as exemplified by Tuskegee and its helpers, has exerted a leavening influence upon civilization wherever it has been brought within the reach of those who are struggling toward the heights. Under this new dispensation of mind, morals, and muscle, with the best whites and best blacks ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various

... or we shall repeat history (as we always do) only after another fashion and, learning as we always can from the annals of monasticism, build our small communities of the right shape and scale in the very midst of the imperial states themselves, so becoming perhaps the leavening of the lump. This of course is what the monasteries of St. Benedict did in the sixth century and those of the Cluniacs and the Cistercians in the eleventh, and it is what the Franciscans and Dominicans tried to do in the fourteenth century, and failed because the fall of the cultural and historic ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... way out was the most puzzling to the vengeful steer, so the bummer cavorted recklessly through the herd, turning and twisting and doubling, stepping on any steer that happened to be lying down in his path, butting others, and leavening things with great success. Under other conditions he would have relished the effect of his efforts, for the herd had arisen as one animal and seemed to be debating the advisability of stampeding; but he was in no mood to relish anything and thought only of getting away. Finally escaping ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford

... of their ideas. In this early sermon in effect, and later with increasing plainness, he set forth his doctrine of a kingdom of heaven coming not with observation, present actually among a people who knew it not, like a seed growing secretly in the earth, or leaven quietly leavening a lump of meal. By word and deed, in sermon and by parable, he insisted on this simple and every-day conception of God's rule among men. With Pharisee, Zealot, and dreamer, he held that "the best is yet to be," yet ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... have enough to annoy me, Michael Daragh has been quite superfluously unpleasant about it. I wrote you how much he liked it when I read the original 'script to him? Well, he has kept talking about the glorious privilege of doing really good work and leavening the lump, and of how the public really wants the best, only the managers haven't faith to know it, and when I had to tell him about the changes,—the comedy and the dance and so on, he just looked at me and looked at me as if I were a lost ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell

... admirers, whose affection for him was founded on their enjoyment of his ponderous witticisms and the humour which was the little leavening of their unexciting lives, had once or twice during the past few days found themselves unprepared for, and so somewhat bewildered by, the new mood which had now and ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... complete her faith in its holiness, and so unquestioning her belief that it was every one's simple duty to brave all dangers for it, and die if need be without a murmur, that contact with her would have inspired with pure patriotic ardor a nature much less ready for such leavening ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy

... emission of the solvent: at least, that is how I picture it. The maggot spits on its food, places on it the wherewithal to make it into broth. To appraise the quantity of the matter expectorated is beyond my powers: I observe the result, but do not perceive the leavening agent. ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... new thoughts were stirring within her, were leavening her whole mind. All through these monotonous months she had watched the quiet routine of patient effort that went to make up the sum of Mr. Alwynn's life. He was a shy man. He seldom spoke of religion out of the pulpit; but all through these ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... become skilled in the arts of sugar-boiling, candle and soap making, the making and baking of huge loaves, cooked in the bake-kettle, unless she be the fortunate mistress of a stone or clay oven. She must know how to manufacture hop-rising or salt-rising for leavening her bread; salting meat and fish, knitting stockings and mittens and comforters, spinning yarn in the big wheel (the French Canadian spinning-wheel), and dyeing the yarn when spun to have manufactured ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... with their impalpable ashes' exhalation in Nature's chemistry distill'd, and shall be so forever, in every future grain of wheat and ear of corn, and every flower that grows, and every breath we draw)—not only Northern dead leavening Southern soil—thousands, aye tens of thousands, of Southerners, crumble to-day ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman



Words linked to "Leavening" :   substance, barm, imponderable, leaven



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