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Power Suffixes: -escence

Learn this list of words that include the suffix -escence, meaning the "process or state of being."
12 words 7,576 learners

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Full list of words from this list:

  1. acquiescence
    acceptance without protest
    When I don’t argue, he takes it as acquiescence.Every Day
  2. adolescence
    the period between the beginning of puberty and adulthood
    My brother became a successful high-school football coach and a mentor to hundreds of young men, helping them through the difficult transition from adolescence to manhood.October Sky
  3. convalescence
    gradual healing through rest after sickness or injury
    After a period of convalescence, the horse returned to racing, only to be injured again.Seabiscuit: An American Legend
  4. effervescence
    the process of bubbling as gas escapes
    In most cases it is the freeing of carbon dioxid that constitutes effervescence, but the freeing of any gas from liquid is effervescence.Ritchie, John W. (John Woodside)
  5. efflorescence
    the period of greatest prosperity or productivity
    The astonishing efflorescence of Iran’s young filmmakers in the 1990s is directly tied to this sense of acute economic disappointment, which produced movies with searing allegories that won numerous international awards.Wall Street Journal (Jul 31, 2015)
  6. evanescence
    the event of fading and gradually vanishing from sight
    Here today, gone tomorrow, they are like rare birds, seldom glimpsed, who remind us of the evanescence of all things, most of all physical beauty and the casual grace of youth.New York Times (Feb 4, 2014)
  7. incandescence
    light emission by a body as its temperature is raised
    He explains that the orange flame is colored by soot particles heated to incandescence.Scientific American (Dec 19, 2019)
  8. iridescence
    the visual property of having lustrous, varying colors
    In iridescence, an object reflects different colors at different angles, separating white light into its constituent colors.Science Magazine (Feb 27, 2019)
  9. luminescence
    the emission of light without heat
    Because in terms of energy-efficiency, if alternative light sources are available, there is no need for an organism to produce its own luminescence.BBC (Jan 16, 2013)
  10. obsolescence
    falling into disuse or becoming out of date
    To safeguard access to stored information in the face of decay or technological obsolescence, archivists regularly transfer data to new media.Nature (Nov 27, 2018)
  11. quiescence
    a state of possibly temporary inaction or dormancy
    But over the next eight years, as solar activity built to a peak and then regressed back toward quiescence, the sun emitted no high-energy gamma rays at all.Scientific American (Mar 28, 2018)
  12. senescence
    the organic process of growing older
    “As organisms – and people – age, changes build up in their cells that eventually trigger cellular senescence,” she said.The Guardian (Dec 21, 2019)
Created on March 5, 2020 (updated March 6, 2020)

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