Horrify vs Petrify - What's the difference?
horrify | petrify |
To cause to feel extreme apprehension or unease; to cause to experience horror.
To harden organic matter by permeating with water and depositing dissolved minerals.
* (and other bibliographic particulars) Kirwan
To produce rigidity akin to stone.
To immobilize with fright.
To become stone, or of a stony hardness, as organic matter by calcareous deposits.
(figurative) To become stony, callous, or obdurate.
* (and other bibliographic particulars) Dryden
(figurative) To make callous or obdurate; to stupefy; to paralyze; to transform; as by petrification.
* (and other bibliographic particulars) (Alexander Pope)
* (and other bibliographic particulars) (George Eliot)
As verbs the difference between horrify and petrify
is that horrify is to cause to feel extreme apprehension or unease; to cause to experience horror while petrify is to harden organic matter by permeating with water and depositing dissolved minerals.horrify
English
Verb
- The haunted house was horrifying , from one room to the next I felt more and more like I wasn’t going to survive.
Synonyms
* See alsoReferences
petrify
English
Verb
- a river that petrifies any sort of wood or leaves
- Like Niobe we marble grow, / And petrify with grief.
- petrify a genius to a dunce
- A hideous fatalism, which ought, logically, to petrify your volition.
