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.
Wiktionary
Causing immense fear; immobilising with fright; scary; frightening; terrifying v
(present participle of petrify English)
WordNet
adj. paralyzing with terror
Usage examples of "petrifying".
One by one, from the outermost ring inward, soldiers, then courtiers, and finally the royal family drank the petrifying brew and slowly sank into a wide-eyed, unblinking coma.
Dipping the dregs of a copper caldron, she diluted the petrifying brew with more wine, and stirred in six curled tails of scorpions.
They'd been released from the petrifying spell while the Memnonites were still frozen.
In fact -- please keep your face straight -- I became convinced I was petrifying, and asked my doctor if it mightn't be the late effects of radiation from Medusa.
Was it really her reflection in Athene's shield that saved me from petrifying, or the fact that Medusa had her eyes closed.
I went around petrifying people deliberately, and it gave me a real thrill to do it Mercifully, Sheena-who was, of course, undead-wasn't affected by my baleful gaze, so we could still get together and wander through the frozen world like two playful demons, mocking the comical Polaroids that everyone else had become, lads and lasses alike.
Suddenly, a woman's roar of protest filled the hallway, petrifying her.
Huple was a good pilot, Yossarian knew, but he was only a kid, and Dobbs had no confidence in him, either, and wrested the controls away without warning after they had dropped their bombs, going berserk in mid-air and tipping the plane over into that heart-stopping, ear-splitting, indescribably petrifying fatal dive that tore Yossarian's earphones free from their connection and hung him helplessly to the roof of the nose by the top of his head.
For a petrifying second, a primitive instinct warned me against standing up with my neck sticking out of a hole in the ground and I turned quickly but saw Farway harmlessly writing in a small notebook, and felt foolish.