'Deliquesce: verb, become liquid. Dissolve in moisture from air. Deliquescence: noun. Deliquescent: adjective.' by Lindsay Bamfield

Deliquescence.

I loved that word.

I used it in my first composition for Miss Tyler.

It was during my first winter in England when it snowed.

There had never been any snow where I’d lived and I’d only seen pictures of it in black and
white.

When I gazed out of my window that morning the whole world had turned black and white,
until a robin red breast perched on the fence.

Before breakfast I crept out of the back door and planted my first steps in the snow although I
saw the robin had beaten me to it.

The snow on the pavement to school was already melting into a sloppy icy mush beneath the
hundreds of footprints of those that walked the same way before me.

By the next day most of the snow was gone, leaving just a few little mounds from melted
snowmen and small drifts beneath sheltered hedges where the sun couldn’t reach it.

I was excited when Miss Tyler gave our exercise books back but when I opened mine to
discover my mark, I found she had written in angry red letters that I was not to use words I
didn’t understand.

Miss Tyler did not explain to me how I should use the word or that the dissolving of
deliquescence did not relate to snow but instead she rapped the back of my hands with her
ruler leaving behind three indelible, stinging red marks.

I am almost a century old now and know so very many more words, and have used thousands
of them in lectures to students all over the world but deliquescence remains one of my
favourites and if I wish to use it in relation to the melting of snow, that is exactly what I will
do, Miss Tyler.