barm

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /bɑːm/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /bɑɹm/
• Rhymes: -ɑː(ɹ)m

Etymology 1

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”).

Noun

barm (plural barms) (obsolete outside dialects)

1. bosom
2. lap

Derived terms

• Abraham's barm
• barmcloth

Etymology 2

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.

Noun

barm (countable and uncountable, plural barms)

1. Foam rising upon beer or other malt liquors when fermenting, used as leaven in brewing and making bread; yeast.
   • c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i], line 25:

     [A]nd sometimes make the drink to bear no barm.

   • 1882, James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, volume 4, page 620:

     In 1577 yeast, called barm, is bought at 9d. the pail.

   • 1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC:

     And he chaffed the women as he served them their ha'porths of barm.

     Penguin 2006, p. 65

2. A small, round, flat individual loaf or roll of bread.

Derived terms

• bacon barm
• barmbrack
• barmy
• chip barm

Translations

foam rising upon beer, etc., when fermenting

Finnish: vaahto (fi) French: mousse (fr) f Irish: giosta m

small, round, flat individual loaf or roll of bread

Etymology 3

From Middle English bermen, from the noun (see above).

Verb

barm (third-person singular simple present barms, present participle barming, simple past and past participle barmed)

1. To spurge; foam

See also

English Wikipedia has an article on:

barm

Wikipedia

• bap
• barmpot
• barmy
• bun
• muffin
• roll

Anagrams

• AMBR, Bram