Library / English Dictionary

PETRIFY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

Irregular inflected form: petrified   

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Cause to become stonelike or stiff or dazed and stunned from fright

Example:

Fear petrified her thinking

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "petrify" is one way to...):

blunt; deaden (make less lively, intense, or vigorous; impair in vigor, force, activity, or sensation)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s something

Sense 2

Meaning:

Make rigid and set into a conventional pattern

Example:

slogans petrify our thinking

Synonyms:

ossify; petrify; rigidify

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "petrify" is one way to...):

stiffen (make stiff or stiffer)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s something

Sense 3

Meaning:

Change into stone

Example:

the wood petrified with time

Synonyms:

lapidify; petrify

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "petrify" is one way to...):

fossilise; fossilize (convert to a fossil)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s something

Derivation:

petrifaction (a rock created by petrifaction; an organic object infiltrated with mineral matter and preserved in its original form)

petrifaction; petrification (the process of turning some plant material into stone by infiltration with water carrying mineral particles without changing the original shape)

Credits

 Context examples: 

Having spread the quilt and folded my night-dress, I went to the window-seat to put in order some picture-books and doll's house furniture scattered there; an abrupt command from Georgiana to let her playthings alone (for the tiny chairs and mirrors, the fairy plates and cups, were her property) stopped my proceedings; and then, for lack of other occupation, I fell to breathing on the frost-flowers with which the window was fretted, and thus clearing a space in the glass through which I might look out on the grounds, where all was still and petrified under the influence of a hard frost.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)