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Fossilize

verb

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To make into a fossil. transitive

    "Most of the booths had been scooped clean by the scalpel-sharp corner of the glacier in the crash. Three remained. Two of them were punctured and, inside, the once-human occupants had been fossilized into the walls by centuries upon centuries of patient ice."

  2. 2
    become mentally inflexible wordnet
  3. 3
    To become a fossil. intransitive
  4. 4
    convert to a fossil wordnet
  5. 5
    To become inflexible or outmoded. broadly, figuratively, intransitive

    "I was getting fossilised myself, but of late my stock of ideas has been very much enlarged."

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  1. 6
    To make antiquated, rigid, or fixed; to deaden. broadly, figuratively, transitive

    "Ten layers of birthdays on a woman's head / Are apt to fossilize her girlish mirth."

Etymology

From fossil + -ize.

See also for "fossilize"

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