fossilize — English Dictionary

Verb

1. To make into a fossil.

   Usage

   • Transitive

   Examples

   More examples (1)

   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. To become a fossil.

   Usage

   • Intransitive

3. To become inflexible or outmoded.

   Usage

   • broadly
   • Figurative
   • Intransitive

   Examples

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

4. To make antiquated, rigid, or fixed; to deaden.

   Usage

   • broadly
   • Figurative
   • Transitive

   Examples

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

   I'll meet you again Blanketed in soil Fossilized in photographs

Verb

1. convert to a fossil

   Synonyms

   fossilise

   Broader terms

   convert

   Examples

   The little animals fossilized and are now embedded in the limestone

2. become mentally inflexible

   Synonyms

   fossilise

   Broader terms

   senesceageget onmaturematurate