Crossword clues for petrify
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Petrify \Pet"ri*fy\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Petrified; p. pr. & vb. n. Petrifying.] [L. petra rock, Gr. ? (akin to ? a stone) + -fy: cf. F. p['e]trifier. Cf. Parrot, Petrel, Pier.]
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To convert, as any animal or vegetable matter, into stone or stony substance.
A river that petrifies any sort of wood or leaves.
--Kirwan. -
To make callous or obdurate; to stupefy; to paralyze; to transform; as by petrifaction; as, to petrify the heart. Young. ``Petrifying accuracy.''
--Sir W. Scott.And petrify a genius to a dunce.
--Pope.The poor, petrified journeyman, quite unconscious of what he was doing.
--De Quincey.A hideous fatalism, which ought, logically, to petrify your volition.
--G. Eliot.
Petrify \Pet"ri*fy\, v. i.
To become stone, or of a stony hardness, as organic matter by calcareous deposits.
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Fig.: To become stony, callous, or obdurate.
Like Niobe we marble grow, And petrify with grief.
--Dryden.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1590s, from Middle French pétrifier "to make or become stone" (16c.), from Latin petra "rock, crag" (see petrous) + -ficare, from facere "to make, do" (see factitious). Metaphoric sense of "paralyze with fear or shock" first recorded 1771. Related: Petrified; petrifying.
Wiktionary
vb. 1 To harden organic matter by permeate with water and depositing dissolved minerals. 2 To produce rigidity akin to stone. 3 To immobilize with fright. 4 (context intransitive English) To become stone, or of a stony hardness, as organic matter by calcareous deposits. 5 (context intransitive figurative English) To become stony, callous, or obdurate. 6 (context transitive figurative English) To make callous or obdurate; to stupefy; to paralyze; to transform; as by petrification.
WordNet
v. cause to become stone-like or stiff or dazed and stunned; "The horror petrified his feelings"; "Fear petrified her thinking"
change into stone; "the wood petrified with time" [syn: lapidify]
make rigid and set into a conventional pattern; "rigidify the training schedule"; "ossified teaching methods"; "slogans petrify our thinking" [syn: rigidify, ossify]
[also: petrified]
Usage examples of "petrify".
In the morning, Eliste reluctantly parted with five biquins for use of the washbasin, cold water and a petrified scrap of soap.
Sinking down upon the stone lip of a big through fed by the run-off of the public pump, she sat as if petrified, thinking of nothing at all.
Then rang out the wild, deafening shrieks of the women, and the terror-stricken screams of men, and all the figures on the raft remained petrified in their places.
The latter sat with drooping head, motionless, as though petrified in thought and prayer.
Foma also bowed low to him, bowed and remained as though petrified, standing with drooping head, his hand leaning against the table.
Foma stepped aside in confusion, seated himself in an armchair, and, petrified with curiosity, wide-eyed, began to watch the meeting of father and son.
She stopped as though petrified, holding a tray in her outstretched hands and listened to everything her brother said about the punishment inflicted upon him.
Zubov had not expected the attack, and he remained as petrified, with his hand uplifted.
And he remained as though petrified in a broken, uncomfortable attitude, all distorted, with an expression of pain on his face.
I pushed them aside, and entered the room so swiftly and suddenly that I found the gentleman in a state of nature while the girl remained stretched on the bed as if petrified by my sudden apparition.
I doubt if Alphonse heard me, being, fortunately for himself, almost petrified with horror.
We stood for a moment petrified, then turned and fled through a gate behind us into a walled garden, fell into, rather than found, a fortunate ditch, and lay there, scarce daring to whisper to each other until the stars were out.
When he returned to his investigations of his petrified brother-in-law he was in possession of a stout stick heavily mounted with a silver knob.
Though he opposed the Kantian philosophy, because of its petrifying tendency, his antagonism was counteracted by others of the Weimar celebrities.
Mu from the petrifying emergence of Ghatanothoa out of its unknown burrows.