efflorescence

Noun

efflorescence (countable and uncountable, plural efflorescences)

1. The production of flowers.
2. (figuratively) Rapid flowering of a culture or civilisation etc.
   • […] for it could not be expected that a class condemned to increasing degradation of mind and body would be able to bring about the greatest revolution in history, including not only economic changes but the efflorescence of art and civilization.1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume II: The Golden Age, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: rozwój (in...
   • 1919, a time when African American hopes for a just future following their service in World War I were dashed by violent reassertions of white supremacy, including the efflorescence and expansion of the KKK into the Midwestern and northwestern U.S.2015, Heidi Nast, “Pit Bulls, Slavery, and Whiteness in the Mid- to Late-Nineteenth-Century U.S.”, in Rosemary-Claire Collard, Kathryn Gillespie, editors, Critical Animal Geographies, page 138
3. The formation of a powdery surface on crystals, as a hydrate is converted to anhydrous form by losing loosely bound water of crystallization to the atmosphere.
4. An encrustation of soluble salts, commonly white, deposited on the surface of stone, brick, plaster, or mortar; usually caused by free alkalies leached from mortar or adjacent concrete as moisture moves through it.
5. An encrustation of soluble salts, deposited on rock or soil by evaporation; often found in arid or geothermal environments.
   • I’d hoped that when the black hole of the Donald Trump presidency ended, redirected energy might allow for a cultural efflorescence. So far that hasn’t happened.2022 August 29, Michelle Goldberg, “The Book That Explains Our Cultural Stagnation”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
6. A redness, rash, or eruption on the skin.