fossilize
English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Verb
[edit]fossilize (third-person singular simple present fossilizes, present participle fossilizing, simple past and past participle fossilized)
- (transitive) to make into a fossil
- 1989, Grant Naylor, Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers:
- Most of the booths had been scooped clean by the scalpel-sharp corner of the glacier in the crash. Three remained. Two of them were punctured and, inside, the once-human occupants had been fossilized into the walls by centuries upon centuries of patient ice.
- (intransitive) to become a fossil
- (figurative, by extension, intransitive) To become inflexible or outmoded.
- 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:
- I was getting fossilised myself, but of late my stock of ideas has been very much enlarged.
- (figurative, by extension, transitive) To make antiquated, rigid, or fixed; to deaden.
- 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Eighth Book”, in Aurora Leigh, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1857, →OCLC:
- Ten layers of birthdays on a woman's head / Are apt to fossilize her girlish mirth.
- 2013, Days N' Daze (lyrics and music), “Blue Jays”, in Rogue Taxidermy:
- I'll meet you again
Blanketed in soil
Fossilized in photographs
Synonyms
[edit]Related terms
[edit]Translations
[edit]to make into fossil
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to become a fossil
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