Fossilize vs Ossify - What's the difference?
fossilize | ossify |
to make into a fossil
* 1989 , Grant Naylor, Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers
to become a fossil
(figurative, by extension, intransitive) to become inflexible or outmoded
(figurative, by extension, transitive) To make antiquated, rigid, or fixed; to deaden.
* Elizabeth Browning
(ambitransitive) To transform (or cause to transform) from a softer animal substance into bone; particularly the processes of growth in humans and animals.
* 1884 , Arthur C. Cole, Studies in Microscopical Science ,
(ambitransitive, animate) To become (or cause to become) inflexible and rigid in habits or opinions.
* 1996 , , The Art of the Long View , p. 96,
* 2006 , Michael S. Jones, Metaphysics of Religion: Lucian Blaga and Contemporary Philosophy , p. 79,
(ambitransitive, inanimate) To grow (or cause to grow) formulaic and permanent.
* 1886 , ,
* 2001 , , translated by Kevin O'Neill and David Suchoff, The Wisdom of Love , p. 55,
* 2005 , Michelle Goldberg, "
(rare) To calcify.
* 1850 , ,
As verbs the difference between fossilize and ossify
is that fossilize is to make into a fossil while ossify is (ambitransitive) to transform (or cause to transform) from a softer animal substance into bone; particularly the processes of growth in humans and animals.fossilize
English
Alternative forms
* fossiliseVerb
(fossiliz)- 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.
- Ten layers of birthdays on a woman's head / Are apt to fossilize her girlish mirth.
Synonyms
* (To become a fossil) fossilate (dated), fossilify (dated)ossify
English
Verb
(en-verb)p. 35,
- , nor do all bones of the same skeleton ossify during the sam? period of time.
- Before long, the entire organization ossifies .
- Possession of absolute knowledge would ossify the human spirit, quenching human creativity;
- This accidental repartition gets repeated, develops advantages of its own, and gradually ossifies into a systematic division of labour.
- Now, in turn, we apply a revolutionary critique that ossifies into a rhetoric to become "the monstrous Latin of a monstrous church."
The war on 'Munich'", Salon.com , December 20, 2005,
- [T]he charge threatens to ossify into conventional wisdom before the movie's audience can get to theaters to see how misguided it is.
- The cartilages become brittle, and in many instances are ossified ; the ligaments are rendered harder, but are less capable of resisting extension.