petrify

From Middle French pétrifier, from Medieval Latin petrificāre, from Latin petra (“rock”), from Ancient Greek πέτρα (pétra, “rock”) + -ficāre, from facere (“do, make”), equivalent to petro- +‎ -ify.

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈpɛ.tɹəˌfaɪ/

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petrified tree Kirstenbosch Cape Town

petrify (third-person singular simple present petrifies, present participle petrifying, simple past and past participle petrified)

1. (transitive) To turn to stone: to harden organic matter by permeating with water and depositing dissolved minerals.
   • 1799, Richard Kirwan, Geological Essays:

     a river that petrifies any sort of wood or leaves

2. To produce rigidity akin to stone.
3. To immobilize with fright.
4. (intransitive) To become stone, or of a stony hardness, as organic matter by calcareous deposits.
5. (intransitive, figurative) To become stony, callous, or obdurate.
   • 1685, John Dryden, Threnodia Augustalis:

     Like Niobe we marble grow, / And petrify with grief.

   • 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “The Result”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 233:

     Hopes, feelings, and passion, petrify one after another; the crust of experience soon hardens over the hidden past; and who, looking on the levelled and subdued exterior, could dream of the wreck and ravage that lies below?

6. (transitive, figurative) To make callous or obdurate; to stupefy; to paralyze; to transform; as by petrification.
   • 1728, [Alexander Pope], “(please specify the page)”, in The Dunciad. An Heroic Poem. […], Dublin, London: […] A. Dodd, →OCLC:

     petrify a genius to a dunce

   • 1874, George Eliot, letter to Mrs. Ponsonby:

     A hideous fatalism, which ought, logically, to petrify your volition.

• See also Thesaurus:frighten

• petrifaction