Fermentation

[ad. L. fermentātiōn-em, n. of action f. ferment-āre to FERMENT.] The action or process of fermenting.

  1.  A process of the nature of that resulting from the operation of leaven on dough or on saccharine liquids.

  The features superficially recognizable in the process in these instances are an effervescence or internal commotion, with evolution of heat, in the substance operated on, and a resulting alteration of its properties. Before the rise of modern chemistry, the term was applied to all chemical changes exhibiting these characters; in Alchemy, it was the name of an internal change supposed to be produced in metals by a ‘ferment,’ operating after the manner of leaven. In modern science the name is restricted to a definite class of chemical changes peculiar to organic compounds, and produced in them by the stimulus of a ‘ferment’ (see FERMENT sb. 1); the various kinds of fermentation are distinguished by qualifying adjs., as acetous, alcoholic, butyric, lactic, putrefactive, etc. (see those words). In popular language the term is no longer applied to other kinds of change than those which it denotes in scientific use, but it usually conveys the notion of a sensible effervescence or ‘working,’ which is not involved in the chemical sense.

  a.  in applications covered by the modern scientific sense.

1601.  Holland, Pliny, XXIII. vii. II. 170. Some vsed to put thereunto [the juice out of mulberries], myrrhe and Cypresse, setting all to frie and take their fermentation in the sun.

a. 1682.  Sir T. Browne, Tracts (1684), i. 26. They made by hindring, and keeping the Must from fermentation or working.

1718.  Quincy, Compl. Disp., 8. The second is the inflammable Spirit of Vegetable, and what is procured by the help of Fermentation.

1796.  C. Marshall, Garden., xiii. (1813), 179. The dung of animals, but chiefly of horses, is put together for fermentation, in order to form bodies of heat.

1842.  A. Combe, Physiol. Digestion (ed. 4), 110. Others … contended, that chymification results from simple fermentation of the alimentary mass.

1874.  M. Cooke, Fungi (1875), i. 3. These cells are capable of producing fermentation in certain liquids under favourable conditions.

  † b.  in Alchemy. Obs.

c. 1386.  Chaucer, Can. Yeom. Prol. & T., 264. Oure cementynge and fermentacioun.

1471.  Ripley, Comp. Alch., IX. in Ashm. (1652), 173. Trew Fermentacyon few Workers do understond.

1599.  Thynne, Animadv. (1875), 32. Fermentacione ys a peculier terme of Alchymye, deduced from the bakers fermente or levyne.

1610.  B. Jonson, Alch., I. i. Dol. Because o’ your fermentation, and cibation?

  † c.  in various other vague applications. Obs.

a. 1661.  Fuller, Worthies (1840), III. 91. Others impute the heat (which is not destructive, but generative, joyned with moisture) to the fermentation of several Minerals.

1671.  Grew, The Anatomy of Plants, I. i. § 30 (1682), 6. The General Cause of the growth of a Bean, or other Seed, is Fermentation.

1678.  State Trials, Earl of Pembroke (1810), 1341. It is proved he drank a great quantity of claret, and afterwards of small-beer, which set the blood upon a fermentation, that set him a vomiting.

1707.  Curios. in Husb. & Gard., 67. An acid Salt mingles it self with an Alkali: from which Mixture results a Fermentation, and very sensible Heat.

1728–46.  Thomson, Spring, 565.

1794.  Sullivan, View Nat., I. 69. As soon as our continents were thus delivered from the waters, the fermentations which they produced, in combination with fire, and other physical agents, ceased.

  † d.  Iron-smelting: see quot. Obs.

1791.  Beddoes, in Phil. Trans., LXXXI. 174. The hottest part of the mass begins to heave and swell, emitting a deep blue lambent flame. The workman calls this appearance fermentation.

  2.  fig. The state of being excited by emotion or passion; agitation, excitement, working. Sometimes (with more complete metaphor): A state of agitation tending to bring about a purer, more wholesome, or more stable condition of things.

c. 1660.  J. Gibbon, in Spurgeon, Treas. Dav., cxlx. 9. A young man all in the heat and boiling of his blood, in the highest fermentation of his youthful lusts.

1682.  Earl Anglesey, State Govt., in Somers, Tracts, II. 196. Predicting, from natural Causes, the happy, future State of our Country; and that the then Fermentation would be perfective to it.

1752.  Hume, Ess. & Treat. (1777), I. 288. The spirit of the age affects all the arts, and the minds of men being once roused from their lethargy and put into a fermentation, turn themselves on all sides, and carry improvements into every art and science.

1845.  S. Austin, Ranke’s Hist. Ref., II. 161. Whether, in such a state of fermentation, they would wait patiently for so remote an event as the convocation and decision of an ecclesiastical assembly.

1859.  Mill, Liberty, ii. 61. In the intellectual fermentation of Germany during the Goethian and Fichtean period.