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foment

Printable Version
Pronunciation: fo-ment Hear it!

Part of Speech: Verb

Meaning: 1. To arouse trouble, instigate undesirable actions. 2. (Dated) To apply poultices.

Notes: The noun for this verb is fomentation which, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the granddaddy of them all, can still mean "warm poultice", leftover from the original meaning of this word. Someone who foments is a fomenter and the adjective is fomenting.

In Play: Here is a word whose temperature went up over the years, from "warm" to "hot": "Archie fomented an office rebellion when he heard about the 20-minute lunch policy coming down the pike." But Archie wasn't satisfied with getting an office up in arms: "Archie went on to form a 'literary society' that actually met to foment opposition against the federal government."

Word History: As late as Middle English fomenten meant simply "to apply warm poultices". ME borrowed the word from Old French fomenter "to apply a hot compress". Old French inherited it from Late Latin fomentare, based on Latin fomentum "warm poultice", from fovere "to warm". This Latin verb was inherited from PIE dhegwh-/dhogwh- "to burn", which Greek turned into tephra "ash", which English now uses in reference to the ash ejected from a volcano. We also find evidence of the PIE word in Slavic: Slovene dĘ́gniti "to burn, warm", Czech dehna "demon, the Devil", and Russian žeč' "burn" (from žeg + ti) and požog "bonfire". Lithuania dègti "burn" and Latvian daglis "cinder" are remnants of the same PIE word. In the Germanic languages we find German Dag "day" and English day.

Dr. Goodword, alphaDictionary.com

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