Webster
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Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Yeast

Yeast (yēst), n. [OE. ȝeest, ȝest, AS. gist; akin to D. gest, gist, G. gischt, gäscht, OHG. jesan, jerian, to ferment, G. gischen, gäschen, gähren, Gr. ζεστός boiled, ζεῖν to boil, Skr. yas. √111.]

1. The foam, or troth (top yeast), or the sediment (bottom yeast), of beer or other in fermentation, which contains the yeast plant or its spores, and under certain conditions produces fermentation in saccharine or farinaceous substances; a preparation used for raising dough for bread or cakes, and making it light and puffy; barm; ferment.

2. Spume, or foam, of water.

They melt thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar. Byron.

Yeast cake, a mealy cake impregnated with the live germs of the yeast plant, and used as a conveniently transportable substitute for yeast. — Yeast plant (Bot.), the vegetable organism, or fungus, of which beer yeast consists. The yeast plant is composed of simple cells, or granules, about one three-thousandth of an inch in diameter, often united into filaments which reproduce by budding, and under certain circumstances by the formation of spores. The name is extended to other ferments of the same genus. See Saccharomyces. - - Yeast powder, a baling powder, — used instead of yeast in leavening bread.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.