Also 7–9 yesty. [f. YEAST sb. + -Y1.]
1. Of, pertaining to, full of, covered with, like or resembling yeast.
1599. Porter, Angry Wom. Abington, D j. His beard, Thats glewed together with his slauering droppes, of yesty ale.
1600. Marston, etc., Jack Drums Entert., I. (1601), A iij. Each … yeastie bowzing bench.
1602. Marston, Ant. & Mel., Ind., Wks. 1856, I. 5. As slovenly as the yeasty breast of an ale-knight.
1676. Cotton, Walton’s Angler, II. viii. 75. We have then [sc. in June] another Dunne, call’d the Barm-flie, from it’s yesty colour.
1683. Tryon, Way to Health, 25. That Yeasty quality that most Ale in Cities, especially in London, is subject unto.
1743. Lond. & Country Brewer, II. (ed. 2), 84. He fell into Drinking such Quantities of their yeasty Ale, as made him distracted.
1836. [see yeastiness below].
1849. Cupples, Green Hand, ii. (1856), 15. From foaming whiteness it melted into yesty green.
transf. 1668. Culpepper & Cole, Barthol. Anat., I. xvi. 39. The Arterial, fermentative, or leavening, and yeasty Blood.
2. fig. with various connotations: ‘Swelling,’ ‘working’; light and superficial, ‘frothy.’
1598. E. Guilpin, Skial. (1878), 36. Like a Swartrutters hose his puffe thoughts swell With yeastie ambition.
1602. Shaks., Ham., V. ii. 199. He … only got the tune of the time, and outward habite of encounter, a kinde of yesty collection, which carries them through & through the most fond and winnowed opinions.
1627. Drayton, Moon-calf, in Agincourt, etc. 161. Knowledge with him is idle, if it straine Aboue the compasse of his yestie braine.
1826. Disraeli, Viv. Grey, IV. i. Byron’s mind was like his own ocean, sublime in its yesty madness.
1904. Athenæum, 2 April, 425/2. Mr. Gosse’s habit of burying his thought in a yeasty mass of adjectives.
3. transf. Foamy, frothy, like troubled water.
1605. Shaks., Macb., IV. i. 53. Though the yesty Waues Confound and swallow Nauigation vp.
1798. Poetry of Anti-Jacobin, No. 36. 236. And Whitbread wallowing in the yeasty main.
1802. Paley, Nat. Theol., xxi. (1819), 331. The yesty waves which confound the heaven and the sea.
1819. Crabbe, T. of Hall, IV. 472. Far up the beach, the yesty sea-foam roll’d.
1820. Byron, Juan, III. lviii. The ocean when its yeasty war is waging Is awful.
1899. F. T. Bullen, Log Sea-waif, 254. We were over the bar and in smooth water, only the yeasty flakes of the spent breakers following us.
Hence Yeastily adv., Yeastiness.
1778. H. Brooke, Antony & Cl., IV. iv. I know not why of late This yestiness of temper comes upon me.
1836. Penny Cycl., V. 405/1. It [sc. creamy scum] however rises again, becomes yesty, the bladders enlarge in size, the yestiness increases, and, when ready for cleansing, it has a vigorous, rich, yesty brown and bladdery head.
1890. W. Clark Russell, Ocean Trag., I. viii. 162. The pale blue brine that melted yeastily from her metalled forefoot.
