a. [f. LEAVEN sb. + -OUS.] Having the properties of leaven.
1649. Milton, Eikon., ix. Wks. 1851, III. 401. A … vitious clergy … whose unsincere and levenous Doctrine corrupting the people, first taught them loosness, then bondage.
1677. Sir P. Warwick, Mem. Chas. I. (1701), 78. When they [Dissenters] could mingle their leavenous zeal with a dissatisfied Lay-lump; (tho’ at first they were not one of twenty) it so fermented the blood, that at last it cast the whole body into a distemper.
