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Petrify   /pˈɛtrəfˌaɪ/   Listen
verb
Petrify  v. t.  (past & past part. petrified; pres. part. petrifying)  
1.
To convert, as any animal or vegetable matter, into stone or stony substance; as, petrified wood. "A river that petrifies any sort of wood or leaves."
2.
To make callous or obdurate; to transform, as by petrifaction; as, to petrify the heart. Young. "Petrifying accuracy." "And petrify a genius to a dunce." "A hideous fatalism, which ought, logically, to petrify your volition."
3.
To paralyze, especially with fear; to stupefy; as, she was petrified by the sight of the bear in her tent. "The poor, petrified journeyman, quite unconscious of what he was doing."


Petrify  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."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Petrify" Quotes from Famous Books



... cold had touched even its insensibility, and made the tracks resound and the paving blocks rattle in the clear air; through deep cisterns of streets, between lofty stone banks—as stern almost as their governing boards, for, although boards are chiefly wooden, a supplication will quickly petrify them; through rows of illuminated stores like walls of Arabian Night visions, with traceries of frost on their windows richer in design than the gems within them; through clustering crowds that entered or left continually the swinging doors of saloons and hotels; past waiting carriages; ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... and touching none. He may indeed (if sober all this time) Plague with dispute, or persecute with rhyme. 260 We only furnish what he cannot use, Or wed to what he must divorce, a Muse: Full in the midst of Euclid dip at once, And petrify a genius to a dunce;[407] Or, set on metaphysic ground to prance, Show all his paces, not a step advance. With the same cement, ever sure to bind, We bring to one dead level every mind. Then take ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... glad you came," she said with great cordiality, seating herself near the other and beaming on her. "I haven't seen a soul since one o'clock and I was beginning to petrify." ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... more than an accidental value until they call before the curtain of the mind those monarchs themselves. It is the business of the archaeologist to awake the dreaming dead: not to send the living to sleep. It is his business to make the stones tell their tale: not to petrify the listener. It is his business to put motion and commotion into the past that the present may see and hear: not to pin it down, spatchcocked, like a dead thing. In a word, the archaeologist must be in command of that faculty which is known as the historic imagination, ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall


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