Foment is a verb that means to instigate or stir up.

Our word of the day comes from the Latin word fovere (for VARE ay) meaning to ‘heat.’ Heating something up is often used in cooking to help ingredients blend together. When we heat up or foment something in a more figurative sense, we instigate them, for example: We didn’t know that when Tammy objected to our uniform, she was trying to foment a rebellion on the softball team. Before long, everyone was boycotting practice until they got the blue and white pinstripes they wanted.