☼ Concept Map

''petrify'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

↩ 🔳 🔳 🔳

Primary

⁀➴

''petrify'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260615002359-00-⌔

petrify - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Verb

🖼️ ➺

petrify (third-person singular simple present petrifies, present participle petrifying, simple past and past participle petrified)

  • (transitive) To turn to stone: to harden organic matter by permeating with water and depositing dissolved minerals.
    • ✤ a river that petrifies any sort of wood or leaves1
  • To produce rigidity akin to stone.
  • To immobilize with fright.
    • ✤ Synonyms: see Thesaurus: frighten
  • (intransitive) To become stone, or of a stony hardness, as organic matter by calcareous deposits.
  • (intransitive, figurative) To become stony, callous, or obdurate.
    • ✤ Like Niobe we marble grow,/And petrify with grief.2
    • ✤ Hopes, feelings, and passion, petrify one after another; the crust of experience soon hardens over the hidden past; and who, looking on the levelled and subdued exterior, could dream of the wreck and ravage that lies below?3
  • (transitive, figurative) To make callous or obdurate; to stupefy; to paralyze; to transform; as by petrification.
    • ✤ * petrify a genius to a dunce*4
    • ✤ A hideous fatalism, which ought, logically, to petrify your volition.5

Etymology

From Middle French pétrifier, from Medieval Latin petrificāre, from Latin petra (“rock”), from Ancient Greek πέτρα (pétra, “rock”) + -ficāre, from facere (“do, make”), equivalent to petro- +‎ -ify.

Pronunciation

  • (US) IPA: /ˈpɛ.tɹəˌfaɪ/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
  • Audio (General American): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1799, Richard Kirwan, Geological Essays: ↩

  2. 1685, John Dryden, Threnodia Augustalis: ↩

  3. 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “The Result”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 233: ↩

  4. 1728, [Alexander Pope], “”, in The Dunciad. An Heroic Poem. […], Dublin; London: […] A. Dodd, →OCLC: ↩

  5. 1874, George Eliot, letter to Mrs. Ponsonby: ↩

Link to original

Secondary

• • •