OSSIFY • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Ossify

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/ˈɑsəfˌaɪ/ Listen

verb

Ossify v. t. (past & past part. ossified; pres. part. ossifying)

(Physiol.) To form into bone; to change from a soft animal substance into bone, as by the deposition of lime salts.

(Fig.): To harden; as, to ossify the heart.

Ossify v. i. (Physiol.) To become bone; to change from a soft tissue to a hard bony tissue.

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Etymology of 'Ossify'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Ossify" Quotes from Famous Books

... one important body or soul becomes so engrossing, that all the noises of the outer world begin to come thin and faint into the parlour with the regulated temperature; and the tin shoes go equably forward over blood and rain. To be overwise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends by standing stockstill. Now the man who has his heart on his sleeve, and a good whirling weathercock of a brain, who reckons his life as a thing to be dashingly used and cheerfully hazarded, makes a very different acquaintance of the world, keeps all his pulses going ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... progress of osteogeny, and have for their obvious final cause the well-being of the growing animal" (p. 105). There is, for example, a teleological reason why in mammals and leaping Amphibia (e.g., frogs), the long bones should ossify first at their ends, for the brain is thus protected from concussion; in reptiles that creep there is less danger of concussion, and the long bones ossify in the middle (p. 105). But there is no teleological reason why the coracoid process of the scapula should in all ...

— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell