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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Ossified

Ossified \Os"si*fied\, a. Changed to bone or something resembling bone; hardened by deposits of mineral matter of any kind; -- said of tissues.

Ossified

Ossify \Os"si*fy\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Ossified; p. pr. & vb. n. Ossifying.] [L. os, ossis, bone + -fy: cf. F. ossifier. See Osseous.]

  1. (Physiol.) To form into bone; to change from a soft animal substance into bone, as by the deposition of lime salts.

  2. (Fig.): To harden; as, to ossify the heart.
    --Ruskin.

Wiktionary
ossified
  1. Of ideas or attitudes, inflexible, old-fashioned. v

  2. (en-past of: ossify)

WordNet
ossified
  1. adj. changed into bone; hardened by deposits of mineral matter; "cartilages ossified with age"

  2. set in a rigidly conventional pattern of behavior, habits, or beliefs; "obsolete fossilized ways"; "an ossified bureaucratic system" [syn: fossilized, fossilised]

ossify
  1. v. become bony; "The tissue ossified"

  2. make rigid and set into a conventional pattern; "rigidify the training schedule"; "ossified teaching methods"; "slogans petrify our thinking" [syn: rigidify, petrify]

  3. cause to become hard and bony; "The disease ossified the tissue"

  4. [also: ossified]

ossified

See ossify

Usage examples of "ossified".

He was very old, and his thoughts were slow and somewhat ossified, like his grumps, but in time they got there.

So on the one hand there is the organic, biologically generative process represented by Indo-European, while on the other there is an inorganic, essentially un-regenerative process, ossified into Semitic: most important, Renan makes it absolutely clear that such an imperious judgment is made by the Oriental philologist in his laboratory, for distinctions of the kind he has been concerned with are neither possible nor available for anyone except the trained professional.

Characteristic of ornithischians are, among other skeletal features, the presence of ossified tendons along the vertebral column and the presence of at least five sacral vertebrae in contact with the pelvis.

Waldo Screener, the Ossified Man, has not been located after several intense searches, and is presumed to have joined his wife.

Animals thudded to the ground, skins shriveled to black parchment and innards cooked, spitting out little wisps of smoke as they ossified in seconds.

Waterboro was being gentrified and ossified, and it was hoped that the Institute would be able to restore life to the community.

At any rate, the steps taken to preserve the colonists from interbreeding resulted in your society becoming ossified.

It was not the sort of talk that a newly appointed maid of honour found at all entertaining, but Zeralenn brooked no recalcitrance, and Eliste found herself trapped, banished to the study for hours on end with no companion but the Count vo Bourray's ossified old Mirror of Courtiers.

I say "cuisines" rather than "cuisine" to point to the fact that human civilization has reached that delectable stage when the local cuisines which have evolved in isolation over the centuries have begun to merge, thanks to easy transportation and mass communication, but have not yet ossified into a single standardized planetary style.

Or that I'd been playing piano in cheapjack speakeasies for nothing more than drinks and whatever change the Doras and ossified lounge lizards could spare.

They were full of thousands of minuscule ratchets and gear wheels and ossified springs, like the innards of inconceivably tiny clocks.

Its head was bent stiffly toward Margo as if prepared to tell her a se­cret, sightless eye sockets bulging, mouth ossified into a rictus of pain.

This indicates an ossified mode of thinking about the most dynamic mass medium ever created, the only interactive mass medium yet.

The smears, smudges, underlinings, and ossified toast scintillae left by their previous owners may strike daintier readers as a little icky, like secondhand underwear.

In the morning they crossed a bed of thunderstones clustered on that heath like the ossified eggs of some primal groundbird.