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Fomentation is the act of stirring people up so they start fighting each other, or so they turn against a government or a leader. You will mostly meet this word in news and in formal writing, not in everyday talk. People more often use the verb: they say someone is fomenting trouble, or fomenting hatred. The noun fomentation names that whole activity — the stirring itself. It can sound a little old and heavy. Though actually, the word had a quieter life first. Doctors used to talk about fomentation as a warm, wet cloth pressed on a sore part of the body, to ease pain. That is the older meaning. The ‘stir up trouble’ meaning grew from the same picture: you warm something until it is hot. In , you warm up anger until it boils over. A student who wants to sound natural can use the verb foment and skip fomentation almost entirely, unless they are reading a newspaper or a history book.
煽動（尤指煽動對立或反抗）。舊義也指熱敷。
組成foment + -ation. Foment comes from Latin fomentum, a warm cloth put on the body, from foveō, ‘to warm’. The ending -ation makes a noun for the act, or the result of the act. The ‘stir up trouble’ meaning comes from that picture of warming something up.
同家族的字
- fomentthe verb; fomentation is the act of fomenting
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
fomentationnoun/fəʊmənˈteɪʃ(ə)n/
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The act of fomenting; the application of warm, soft, medicinal substances, as for the purpose of easing pain by relaxing the skin, or of discussing (dispersing) tumours.
- Twenty leeches were ordered to be applied round the nose every two days; frequent emollient fomentations; the local vapour bath; general bathing; stimulating pedilavia; a strict regimen; vegetables, milk, white meats; demulcent or acidulated drinks; avoidance of exposure to the sun or to cold air; flannel waistcoat and trousers. This treatment, being strictly observed for two months, caused all the inflammatory symptoms to disappear, […]
- We have already spoken of the great utility of hot fomentation to the stomach and bowels, as a means of relieving intense suffering in any internal organ of the body, or in the extremities.
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A lotion or poultice applied to a diseased or injured part of the body.
- […] I purged him with our Quintaeſſencia Solutiuo, eight dayes together, that being done I made him a fomentation, that cauſed him to ſweate well, and to ſpitte aboundaunce, […]
- If too much milke be the cauſe, then the Nurſe ſhall not give the childe ſucke ſo often, nor in ſuch plenty: If it proceed from wind, and that doe cauſe the childe to be thus troubled, it ſhall be diſcuſſed with Fomentations applied to the belly and navell; and with Carminative Cliſters, which ſhall bee given him, […]
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Encouragement; excitation; instigation.
- [T]he Catholick King complained very much thereof, upbraiding the moſt Chriſtian King how ill this did correſpond to the ſo many aſſiſtances which were given by Spain to France ſince that from thence ſo great a fomentation was now preparing to his Rebels in Flanders.
- [I]n remote situations, physical and moral phenomena being divested of adventitious attractions, and presented to the mind in their true colours and real relations, are likely to attract its energies in proportion to their importance: at least, in this medium, many objects almost invisible in a more luminous and diversified scene, are seen so large, as compleatly to conceal some of these which with a little fomentation excite the most ardent popular attention— […]
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。