Say What?

I like a book that isn’t written for grade eighters. I really hate classes on writing that insist that this is the level you should write for. Surely if we always aim for a grade eight audience eventually we’ll find that there are those that find it too lofty and we’ll have to aim for grade seven? And then six? At some point people who can read will be the elite minority. I digress. Sorry.

So yes, when an author has a word that I don’t know I am quite pleased. I look it up so I have a new word and I continue on with reading. The author I am currently reading (Victoria Clayton) is turning out to be quite the wordsmith. I’ve come across three unfamiliar words so far. It is far more usual to find three words in every hundred books read, so three in the first hundred pages of a single book is amazing. I think I’ll keep a paper in the back of the book to write things down as by the time I’d found a dictionary I’d forgotten the first word I wanted to check. The second word was tumid (in the context of the story, the first definition in the OED, "swollen". Also means bombastic). The third word, the one that made me stop right then and there to search for a definition was this: deliquescent.

Now maybe you know what this means. Kudos to you, that’s pretty good. Maybe I should learn Latin, to help with etymology. Anyway, I had to look it up. Not that the dictionary gave me an answer that solved it for me. Their definition was:
1.
the act or process of deliquescing.
2.
the substance produced when something deliquesces.

Ah, I see. Totally clear now. Sigh. Back to OED online. So, what does deliquesce mean?

–verb (used without object),-quesced, -quesc•ing.
1.
to become liquid by absorbing moisture from the air, as certain salts.
2.
to melt away.
3.
Botany. to form many small divisions or branches.

Does this count as continuing education?