Verb

(en-verb)

(obsolete) To kill.

(obsolete) To reduce the potency of; to nullify; to deaden, neutralize.

* Francis Bacon

Quicksilver is mortified with turpentine.

* Hakewill

He mortified pearls in vinegar.

(obsolete) To kill off (living tissue etc.); to make necrotic.

*, II.3:

*:Servius the Grammarian being troubled with the gowt, found no better meanes to be rid of it, than to apply poison to mortifie his legs.

To discipline (one's body, appetites etc.) by suppressing desires; to practise abstinence on.

Some people seek sainthood by mortifying the body.

* Harte

With fasting mortified , worn out with tears.

* Prior

Mortify thy learned lust.

* Bible, Col. iii. 5

Mortify , therefore, your members which are upon the earth.

(usually, used passively) To embarrass, to humiliate.

I was so mortified I could have died right there, instead I fainted, but I swore I'd never let that happen to me again.

*

, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=5 , passage=Then we relapsed into a discomfited silence, and wished we were anywhere else. But Miss Thorn relieved the situation by laughing aloud, and with such a hearty enjoyment that instead of getting angry and more mortified we began to laugh ourselves, and instantly felt better.}}

(obsolete) To affect with vexation, chagrin, or humiliation; to humble; to depress.

* Evelyn

the news of the fatal battle of Worcester, which exceedingly mortified our expectations

* Addison

How often is the ambitious man mortified with the very praises he receives, if they do not rise so high as he thinks they ought!

(Scotland, legal, historical) To grant in mortmain

* 1876 James Grant, History of the Burgh and Parish Schools of Scotland , Part II, Chapter 14, p.453 ( PDF 2.7 MB):

the schoolmasters of Ayr were paid out of the mills mortified by Queen Mary

Verb

To harden organic matter by permeating with water and depositing dissolved minerals.

* (and other bibliographic particulars) Kirwan

a river that petrifies any sort of wood or leaves

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

Like Niobe we marble grow, / And petrify with grief.

(figurative) To make callous or obdurate; to stupefy; to paralyze; to transform; as by petrification.

* (and other bibliographic particulars) (Alexander Pope)

petrify a genius to a dunce

* (and other bibliographic particulars) (George Eliot)

A hideous fatalism, which ought, logically, to petrify your volition.