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yeast.

An often humid, yellowish froth produced by fermenting malt worts, and used to brew beer, leaven bread, and also used in certain medicines.

5 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/jiːst/Received-Pronunciation/jist/General-American/iːst/dialectal

  1. An often humid, yellowish froth produced by fermenting malt worts, and used to brew beer, leaven bread, and also used in certain medicines.

    countable · uncountable

  2. A single-celled fungus of any of a wide variety of taxonomic families.

    countable · uncountable

  3. A single-celled fungus of any of a wide variety of taxonomic families. A true yeast or budding yeast in order Saccharomycetales. Baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae)

    countable · uncountable

  4. A single-celled fungus of any of a wide variety of taxonomic families. A true yeast or budding yeast in order Saccharomycetales. Baker's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) A compressed cake or dried granules of this substance used for mixing with flour to make bread dough rise.

    countable · uncountable

  5. A single-celled fungus of any of a wide variety of taxonomic families. A true yeast or budding yeast in order Saccharomycetales. brewer's yeast, certain species of Saccharomyces, principally Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Saccharomyces carlsbergensis.

    countable · uncountable

  6. A single-celled fungus of any of a wide variety of taxonomic families. Candida, a ubiquitous fungus that can cause various kinds of infections in humans.

    countable · uncountable

  7. A single-celled fungus of any of a wide variety of taxonomic families. Candida, a ubiquitous fungus that can cause various kinds of infections in humans. The resulting infection, candidiasis.

    countable · uncountable

  8. A frothy foam.

    countable · figuratively · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From Middle English yest, yeest, gest, gist, from Old English ġist, ġyst, from Proto-West Germanic *jestu, from Proto-Germanic *jestuz. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Jääst (“yeast”), West Frisian gêst, gist (“yeast”), Dutch gist (“yeast”), German Low German Gest (“yeast”), German Gischt (“sea foam”), Swedish jäst (“yeast”), Norwegian jest (“yeast”), Icelandic jöstur (“yeast”).

verb/jiːst/Received-Pronunciation/jist/General-American/iːst/dialectal

  1. To ferment.

  2. To rise.

  3. To exaggerate.

    slang
Where this word comes from

From Middle English yest, yeest, gest, gist, from Old English ġist, ġyst, from Proto-West Germanic *jestu, from Proto-Germanic *jestuz. Cognate with Saterland Frisian Jääst (“yeast”), West Frisian gêst, gist (“yeast”), Dutch gist (“yeast”), German Low German Gest (“yeast”), German Gischt (“sea foam”), Swedish jäst (“yeast”), Norwegian jest (“yeast”), Icelandic jöstur (“yeast”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.