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Panic vs Petrify - What's the difference?

panic | petrify |

As verbs the difference between panic and petrify

is that panic is to feel overwhelming fear while petrify is to harden organic matter by permeating with water and depositing dissolved minerals.

As an adjective panic

is pertaining to the god Pan.

As a noun panic

is overpowering fright, often affecting groups of people or animals.

panic

English

(wikipedia panic)

Etymology 1

From (etyl) panique, from (etyl) . is the god of woods and fields who was the source of mysterious sounds that caused contagious, groundless fear in herds and crowds, or in people in lonely spots.

Alternative forms

* panick (obsolete)

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Pertaining to the god Pan.
  • Of fear, fright etc: sudden or overwhelming (attributed by the ancient Greeks to the influence of ).
  • *, Folio Society, 2006, vol.1, pp.57-8:
    • All things were there in a disordered confusion, and in a confused furie, untill such time as by praiers and sacrifices they had appeased the wrath of their Gods. They call it to this day, the Panike terror.
  • * 1978 , (Lawrence Durrell), Livia'', Faber & Faber 1992 (''Avignon Quintet ), p.537:
    • At that moment a flight of birds passed close overhead, and at the whirr of their wings a panic fear seized her.
  • * 1993 , James Michie, trans. Ovid, The Art of Love , Book II:
    • Terrified, he looked down from the skies / At the waves, and panic blackness filled his eyes.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Overpowering fright, often affecting groups of people or animals.
  • *
  • *:She wakened in sharp panic , bewildered by the grotesquerie of some half-remembered dream in contrast with the harshness of inclement fact.
  • *{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)
    • , chapter=19 citation , passage=Meanwhile Nanny Broome was recovering from her initial panic and seemed anxious to make up for any kudos she might have lost, by exerting her personality to the utmost. She took the policeman's helmet and placed it on a chair, and unfolded his tunic to shake it and fold it up again for him.}}
  • *1994 , (Stephen Fry), (The Hippopotamus) Chapter 2
  • *:With a bolt of fright he remembered that there was no bathroom in the Hobhouse Room. He leapt along the corridor in a panic , stopping by the long-case clock at the end where he flattened himself against the wall.
  • Rapid reduction in asset prices due to broad efforts to raise cash in anticipation of continuing decline in asset prices.
  • *
    • Derived terms
    * panic attack * panic button * panic disorder * panic room

    Verb

  • To feel overwhelming fear.

    • Related terms

    * panicky

    Etymology 2

    (etyl) (lena) panicum.

    Noun

  • (botany) A plant of the genus Panicum .
    • Synonyms
    * panicgrass, ----

    petrify

    English

    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.

    Synonyms

    * See also

    Related terms

    * petrifaction