Definition of Petrify

Pet´ri`fy
v. t.1.To convert, as any animal or vegetable matter, into stone or stony substance.
[imp. & p. p. Petrified ; p. pr. & vb. n. Petrifying .]
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.
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.
v. i.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.


Related Words

alarm, amaze, anneal, appall, astonish, astound, awe, awestrike, bedaze, bedazzle, bemuse, benumb, bewilder, boggle, bowl down, bowl over, calcify, callous, case harden, confound, cornify, crystallize, daze, dazzle, disconcert, dismay, dumbfound, dumbfounder, firm, flabbergast, fossilize, freeze, frighten, harden, horrify, indurate, lapidify, lithify, numb, ossify, overwhelm, paralyze, perplex, scare, scare stiff, scare to death, shock, stagger, startle, steel, strike dead, strike dumb, strike terror into, strike with wonder, stun, stupefy, surprise, temper, terrify, toughen, turn to stone, vitrify

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