Leaven v.

Forms: see the sb. Also pa. pple. 5 y-lavenyt, 6 levended. [f. LEAVEN sb.]

  1.  trans. To produce fermentation in (dough) by means of leaven.

1422.  trans. Secreta Secret., Priv. Priv., 241. The brede be hit made of whete and euenly y-lauenyt.

1528.  Paynel, Salerne’s Regim. (1541), 45 b. This text declareth .v. propretes of good breadde. The fyrste is, hit must be well leuende.

1535.  Coverdale, Hos. vii. 2. As it were an ouen y^t the baker heateth … till the dowe be leuended.

1611.  Bible, 1 Cor. v. 6. Know ye not that a little leauen leaueneth the whole lumpe?

1638.  Rawley, trans. Bacon’s Life & Death (1650), 47. Bread, a little leavened, and very little salted, is best.

  absol.  1650.  Trapp, Comm. Exod., 74. In the Meat-offering, it was not lawful to offer leaven, or anie thing that leaveneth, as honie.

  2.  fig. (Cf. LEAVEN sb. 2.) To permeate with a transforming influence as leaven does; to imbue or mingle with some tempering or modifying element; † rarely, to debase or corrupt by admixture.

1550.  Latimer, Last Serm. bef. Edw. VI. (1562), 118 b. But beware ye that are Maiestrates, theyr synne dothe leauen you all.

1576.  Fleming, Panopl. Epist., 35. Your advise, being leavened with singular wisedome. Ibid., 238. When I had perceived … that your friendshippe was leavened with lightnesse and inconstancie.

1647.  N. Bacon, Disc. Govt. Eng., I. iii. 7. Thus the Romans levened with the Gospell … insinuated that leven by degrees.

1682.  Sir T. Browne, Chr. Mor., I. § 1. Leven not good Actions nor render Virtues disputable.

1682.  Burnet, Rights Princes, Pref. 29. Only they were too much leavened with a superstitious conceit of the Rights of the Church.

c. 1718.  Prior, Ladle, 166. That cruel something unpossess’d Corrodes and leavens all the rest.

1860.  Reade, Cloister & H., lii. When this revelation had had time to leaven the city.

1862.  Goulburn, Pers. Relig., IV. xii. (1873), 355. The indolent, evil thought would still insinuate itself until it leavened their entire character.

1865.  Merivale, Rom. Emp., VIII. lxv. 144. Bithynia … and the adjacent parts of Asia were at the time more leavened with Christian opinions than other districts of the empire.

1877.  Mrs. Oliphant, Makers Flor., xi. 273. A mob which it was very easy to leaven with noisy men here and there.

  Hence Leavening vbl. sb. and ppl. a.

1606.  Shaks., Tr. & Cr., I. i. 20, 22. You must tarry the leau’ing…. I, to the leauening.

a. 1626.  Bacon, New Atl. (1627), 37. Breads we haue of severall Graines,… With diuerse Kindes of Leauenings, and Seasonings.

1674.  N. Fairfax, Bulk & Selv., 128. By … fermentation or bustle of the working or leavening particles.

1878.  Maclear, Celts, vii. 105. It did not retain the leavening influences now introduced.

1894.  Athenæum, 10 Nov., 633/2. [The world was] seething and fermenting … under the leavening influences of Christianity.

  Leaven, obs. form of ELEVEN.

1549.  Latimer, Seven Sermons, A a iij b. It was a solitarye place and thyther he wente w^t hys leauen Apostles.