Pl. zymoses. [mod.L., ad. Gr. ζύμωσις fermentation, f. ζυμοῦν to leaven, in pass. to ferment, f. ζύμη leaven: see -OSIS.] Fermentation; spec. the morbid process which constitutes a zymotic disease, regarded as analogous to or involving fermentation.
1842. W. Farr, in 4th Ann. Rep. Reg-Gen., 201, note. Zymosis fermentation, and zyma ferment, may also be employed in English, not in the sense which they have in Greek, but as general designations of the morbid processes and their exciters. Ibid., 202 [see ZYMIN].
1876. Bartholow, Mat. Med. (1879), 523. As all fermentations are correlative of the growth and multiplication of these minute bodies, carbolic acid, by destroying their activity, arrests zymosis.
fig. 1876. Emerson, Lett. & Soc. Aims, Eloquence, Wks. (Bohn), III. 195. In the Elizabethan Age there was a dramatic zymosis, when all the genius ran in that direction.
