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If you had sore muscles in the 1600s, your doctor might have advised you to foment the injury, perhaps with heated lotions or warm wax. Does this sound like an odd prescription? It's less so if you know that foment traces to the Latin verb fovēre, which means "to heat or warm" or "to soothe." The earliest documented English uses of foment appear in medical texts offering advice on how to soothe various aches and pains by the application of moist heat. In time, the idea of applying heat became a metaphor for stimulating or rousing to action. Foment then started being used in political contexts to mean "to stir up" or "to call to action."
Synonyms
Examples of foment in a Sentence
Lily Hay Newman, WIRED, 23 Oct. 2024
The clips, which first emerged Sunday, also continue to foment speculation about what was really going on between them.
—Martha Ross, The Mercury News, 15 Oct. 2024
Cornell Law Professor William Jacobson on college faculty members and their role in fomenting student protests.
—Fox News Staff, Fox News, 13 Sep. 2024
In the second term especially, these pop-culture controversies became a pressure-release valve for passions the political system could not accommodate and helped foment a destabilizing backlash.
—Nate Jones, Vulture, 20 Aug. 2024
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Dictionary Entries Near foment
Cite this Entry
“Foment.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/foment. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
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