Barm
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 bosom dialectal, obsolete
- 2 Foam rising upon beer or other malt liquors when fermenting, used as leaven in brewing and making bread; yeast. countable, dialectal, obsolete, uncountable
"[A]nd sometimes make the drink to bear no barm."
- 3 a commercial leavening agent containing yeast cells; used to raise the dough in making bread and for fermenting beer or whiskey wordnet
- 4 lap dialectal, obsolete
- 5 A small, round, flat individual loaf or roll of bread. countable, dialectal, obsolete, uncountable
- 1 To spurge; foam dialectal, obsolete
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"[A]nd sometimes make the drink to bear no barm."
Etymology
From Middle English barm, barme, berm, bearm, from Old English bearm (“lap; bosom”), from Proto-West Germanic *barm, from Proto-Germanic *barmaz (“lap; bosom”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰer- (“to bear”). Cognate with German Barm (“lap; bosom”).
From Middle English berme, berm, from Old English beorma, from Proto-West Germanic *bermō (“yeast; barm”); related to the dialectal Low German Bärm (“yeast”), from Middle Low German barm, berm. The cake sense is possibly a shortened form of barmcake, which would be made with yeast as described in that sense, or possibly it is from the Irish bairín breac, a type of bread.
From Middle English bermen, from the noun (see above).
Related phrases
More for "barm"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.