petrify Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. verb cause to become stonelike or stiff or dazed and stunned
    • The horror petrified his feelings
    • Fear petrified her thinking
  2. verb change into stone
    lapidify.
    • the wood petrified with time
  3. verb make rigid and set into a conventional pattern
    rigidify; ossify.
    • rigidify the training schedule
    • ossified teaching methods
    • slogans petrify our thinking

WordNet

Pet"ri*fy transitive verb
Etymology
L. petra rock, Gr. (akin to a stone) + -fy: cf. F. pétrifier. Cf. Parrot, Petrel, Pier.
Wordforms
imperfect & past participle Petrified ; present participle & verbal noun Petrifying
Definitions
  1. To convert, as any animal or vegetable matter, into stone or stony substance.
    A river that petrifies any sort of wood or leaves. Kirwan.
  2. 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.
Pet"ri*fy intransitive verb
Definitions
  1. To become stone, or of a stony hardness, as organic matter by calcareous deposits.
  2. Fig.: To become stony, callous, or obdurate.
    Like Niobe we marble grow, And petrify with grief. Dryden.

Webster 1913