effloresce
Americanverb (used without object)
-
to burst into bloom; blossom.
-
Chemistry.
-
to change either throughout or on the surface to a mealy or powdery substance upon exposure to air, as a crystalline substance through loss of water of crystallization.
-
to become incrusted or covered with crystals of salt or the like through evaporation or chemical change.
-
verb
-
to burst forth into or as if into flower; bloom
-
to become powdery by loss of water or crystallization
-
to become encrusted with powder or crystals as a result of chemical change or the evaporation of a solution
Etymology
Origin of effloresce
1765–75; < Latin efflōrēscere to blossom out, equivalent to ef- ef- + flōrēscere to begin to bloom ( flōr ( i )-, stem of flōs flower + -ēscere -esce )
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Two decades later the image would effloresce in the story/novella “Cousins”:
From New York Times ● Apr. 27, 2015
But eventually the virus predominates in the blood and the primitive cells effloresce into cancer.
From Time Magazine Archive
A great deal of chemical action then commences, salts of various kinds effloresce on the surface, and the mass becomes hard.
From The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin
The longest way round is the shortest way home; trust Him with all your hearts first, and that will effloresce into "whatsoever things are lovely and whatever things are of good report."
From Expositions of Holy Scripture St. John Chapters I to XIV by Alexander Maclaren
But the broad principles will effloresce into all manner of perfectnesses and all fruits.
From Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John by Alexander Maclaren
The written-out trills of the 28th Variation effloresced with a mild gleam, and the fughetta of the 10th hit the ear with a tonal wall of sound.
From New York Times ● Feb. 8, 2024
Since his marriage, he has effloresced in Washington society.
From Time Magazine Archive
Sometimes the manners of the British have effloresced in scolding at the word as ill-chosen—ill-chosen, that is, to express some meaning that it was rather designed to exclude.
From The pragmatic theory of truth as developed by Peirce, James, and Dewey by Delton Loring Geyer
The arsenic and corrosive sublimate effloresced from the ties along the Memphis and Charleston Railroad.
From Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 by Various
As for McGill, he expanded, he effloresced, if such a nature as his could be said to bloom.
From The Crimson Gardenia and Other Tales of Adventure by Rex Ellingwood Beach
Before leaving the valley, he observed a hillock glistening white: it appears from its salt, bitter taste, to have been some kind of nitrate efflorescing from the ground.
From First Footsteps in East Africa by Sir Richard Francis Burton
Is not, after all, Love the one supreme and significant fact of the cosmos: indelible, indecipherable: efflorescing in Man; emerging from the material; idealizing the carnal; pointing to an inscrutable, a spiritual goal?
From Hints for Lovers by T. Arnold (Theodore Arnold) Haultain
Cities, especially Cities in Revolution, are subject to these alternations; the secret courses of civic business and existence effervescing and efflorescing, in this manner, as a concrete Phenomenon to the eye.
From The French Revolution by Thomas Carlyle
There stood that unfinished world reeking with charcoal fumes, its soft, fungous, cryptogamic vegetation efflorescing with fierce luxuriance in that ghastly carbonic atmosphere.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 15, January, 1859 by Various
These may subsequently be covered with drifting sands and capillary action may cause the borates to work up through the sands, becoming mixed with them and efflorescing at the surface.
From The Economic Aspect of Geology by C. K. (Charles Kenneth) Leith
Random Word
Spin the wheel and learn a new word!
Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
