FOMENT • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Foment

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/fˈoʊmɛnt/ Listen

noun

Foment n.

1.

Fomentation.

2.

State of excitation; perh. confused with ferment. "He came in no conciliatory mood, and the foment was kept up."

verb

Foment v. t. (past & past part. fomented; pres. part. fomenting)

1.

To apply a warm lotion to; to bathe with a cloth or sponge wet with warm water or medicated liquid.

2.

To cherish with heat; to foster. (Obs.) "Which these soft fires... foment and warm."

3.

To nurse to life or activity; to cherish and promote by excitements; to encourage; to abet; to instigate; used often in a bad sense; as, to foment ill humors. " But quench the choler you foment in vain." " Exciting and fomenting a religious rebellion."

See images of 'Foment'

Etymology of 'Foment'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"Foment" Quotes from Famous Books

... March Grenville again assured him of the earnest desire of the British Government to see the end of the troubles in France, and declared that Pitt and he had been deeply wounded by the oft-repeated insinuations that they had sought to foment them. All such charges were absurd; for "a commercial people stands only to gain by the freedom of all those who surround it." We may reasonably conclude that these were the words of Pitt; for they recall that noble passage of the ...

— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... distant be, Yet jointly here they both in one agree. The whole's a sacrifice of salt and fire; So does the humour of the age require, To chafe the touch, and so foment desire. As doctrine-dangling preachers lull asleep Their unattentive pent-up fold of sheep; The opiated milk glues up the brain, And th' babes of grace are in their cradles lain; ( xxiv) While mounted Andrews, bawdy, ...

— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus

... by a man who either received or adopted the title of the Golden Dragon. At the bottom of all the trouble we find, as usually to be expected henceforward, the secret activities of the far-reaching Triad Society, which seized the occasion to foment into open rebellion the dissatisfaction of the tribesmen with the glaring injustice they were suffering at the hands of the local authorities. After some initial massacres and reprisals, a general was sent to put an end to the outbreak; but so far from doing this, he seems to have come off ...

— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... who diligently practised the wise maxims of Diocletian, was studious to foment and excite the intestine divisions of the tribes of Germany. About the middle of the fourth century, the countries, perhaps of Lusace and Thuringia, on either side of the Elbe, were occupied by the vague dominion of the Burgundians; a ...

— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... direction of affairs. What can they expect but the utmost efforts of malice from a set of enraged domestic adversaries, perpetually watching over their conduct, crossing all their designs, and using every art to foment divisions among them, in order to join with the weakest upon any rupture? The difficulties they must encounter are nine times more and greater than ever; and the prospects of interest, after the reapings ...

— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com