de lə kwes
intransitive verb
1. to melt away; dissolve.
The old local order has been broken up or is now being broken up all over the earth, and everywhere
societies deliquesce, everywhere men are afloat amidst the wreckage of their flooded conventions,
and still tremendously unaware of the thing that has happened.(H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia)
2. to dissolve gradually and change into a liquid by absorbing moisture from the air.
“Rock salt is found near Neiba in inexhaustible quantities, there being several hills of native salt covered with a thin layer of soil….The salt is so pure that it does not attract moisture and deliquesce.”
(Otto Schoenrich, Santo Domingo: A Country With a Future, 1918)
3. in botany, to branch out repeatedly and form many subdivisions that lack a main axis.
