Leaven

Quick meaning: Leaven is a noun meaning Any agent used to make dough rise or to have a similar effect on baked goods.

Meaning

Any agent used to make dough rise or to have a similar effect on baked goods.

More Meanings

1. (figurative) Anything that induces change, especially a corrupting or vitiating change.
2. (Judaism) Chametz.
3. (transitive) To add a leavening agent.
4. (transitive) To cause to rise by fermentation.
5. (transitive, figuratively) To temper an action, decision, attitude, characteristic, etc.
6. (transitive, figuratively) To imbue; to infect; to vitiate.
7. To rise or become larger; to prove.

Example Sentences

Yeast is used to leaven bread, making it rise during baking.

On the fourteenth day of Nisan men search for leaven by candlelight.

The leaven of insincerity worked through all the fibres of his being.

Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the leaven of Herod.

Word Forms

• leavens
• leavening
• leavened

Synonyms for leaven

Depending on context, synonyms include raise, prove, leavening.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include raise, prove, yeast, raising, sponge, baking powder.

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