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Glite Dictionary
🥬 To break down 🔥 Great excitement ⚡ To stir up trouble 🍶 A chemical process 🦠 A fermenting agent
to ferment

to ferment

3 7.5
To cause people to feel strong excitement or public unrest
  • verb
  • /fərˈmɛnt/
translation icon : fomentar
  • The Catalyst was viewed as part of a more comprehensive student movement to disrupt university operations and ferment violent disruption.

And I think that will only kind of ferment the sense of resentment that some feel that there's not fair across the board.

Examples

  • Personalities ferment; ideas are provoked, and so, also not infrequently, is irritation.

    Academic text (1998)

  • Since 2011, Europe's debt crisis continued to ferment, which added new variables to the recovery of the world economy.

    Blog text (23)

  • And I think that will only kind of ferment the sense of resentment that some feel that there's not fair across the board.

    Triggernometry

  • Israel is reacting to anger that has been fermenting for thousands of years.

    Blog text (20)

  • A narrow margin of the conservative victory proved that the pro-reform movement within the Virtue Party is fermenting.

    Academic text (2000)

  • Many in the West view post-Communist Russia as a nation struggling with an anarchic economic system and a rampant black market; many Chinese realize that the same problems are fermenting in their own society as well.

    Academic text (1993)

  • Collectively, anti-Indian organizations fermented hostility toward Native Americans by claiming that tribal bodies were exploiting "public sympathies" and "historical white guilt" in an effort to gain access to natural resources, including water, land, and fish.

    Academic text (2005)

  • The political situation began to ferment unrest among the citizens, leading to protests in the streets.

  • Her comments about the management's decisions seemed to ferment dissatisfaction among the staff.

  • As rumors spread, they would ferment anxiety and fear within the community.

Synonyms

to be aboil
vsto ferment
  • Archaic
9.9

To feel strong excitement or worry

also involves causing unrest rather than only experiencing it
to brew up a storm
vsto ferment
  • Informal
7.1

To cause a lot of excitement and strong reactions

can mean causing or feeling unrest, not necessarily on a large scale

Antonyms

to calm
962 1.0

Make a person or animal less upset

to settle
596 3.3

To end an argument by agreement or decision

How Agitating

to incite
  • NSFW
72 7.7
to instigate
36 6.9
to ferment
3 7.5
to agitate
11 5.6
to provoke
144 3.6
to disturb
183 2.1
to unsettle
7 4.9

Surface Forms

ferment infinitive
fermented past
fermented past participle
fermenting present participle
ferments third person singular

Etymology

To ferment in the sense of causing unrest comes from the Latin fervere 'to boil' — imagine stirring a pot until it bubbles. So to ferment unrest is to stir up strong feelings or trouble.