Definition of "deliquescent" in English

adjective

1. Seeming to melt away.

2. (physical chemistry) Absorbing moisture from the air and forming a solution.

   • deliquescent salts

3. (botany) Branching so that the stem is lost in branches, as in most deciduous trees.

   • 1850, Asa Gray, The Botanical Text-Book, New York: Putnam, 3rd edition, rewritten and enlarged, Chapter 4, p. 102, In other cases, the main stem is arrested, sooner or later, either by flowering, by the failure of the terminal bud, or the more vigorous development of some of the lateral buds, and thus the trunk is lost in the branches, or is deliquescent, as in most of our deciduous-leaved trees.

4. (mycology, of the fruiting body of a fungus) Becoming liquid as a phase of its life cycle.