liquefaction
nounEtymology From Middle English liquefaction, from Middle French liquefaction (modern French liquéfaction), from Medieval Latin liquefactiō.
1
The process of being, or state of having been, made liquid (from either a solid or a gas).
- Whenas in silks my Julia goes, / Then, then (methinks) how sweetly flows / That liquefaction of her clothes.1648, Robert Herrick, “Upon Julia's Clothes”, in Hesperides, or The VVorks both Humane & Divine, London: Printed for John Williams, and Francis Eglesfield, […], →OCLC; republished in Poems By Robert Herrick, London: The Gresham Publishing Company, n.d., page 19:
2
The liquid or semiliquid that results from this process.
- Where we might usually have applied dressings and put bandages on, many people weren't able to keep dressings on their cats clean and dry because houses and gardens were full of liquefaction.2017, Jacob Bull, Tora Holmberg, Cecilia Åsberg, Animal Places: Lively Cartographies of Human-Animal Relations:
- The student army carried on shovelling liquefaction and the women in the homes nearby fed them without a thought.2019, Frances McCaughey -, Carrig Of Dromara:
- Derived terms
- reliquefaction