leaven

1. 1.

   cause to puff up with a leaven

   “unleavened bread”

   Synonymsraiseprove

   Broaderraise

Other forms of leaven

plural

leavens·

past tense

leavenned·

present participle

leavenning·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about leaven

What does leaven mean?

leaven means "a substance used to produce fermentation in dough or a liquid". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in leaven?

leaven has 2 syllables: leav-en. The stress falls on "leav". In IPA it is /ˈlɛvən/.

What is another word for leaven?

Close synonyms include leavening, leavening, raise, prove. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is leaven a common word?

leaven is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with leaven?

1 word rhymes with leaven. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.