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Petrify vs Fossil - What's the difference?

petrify | fossil |

As a verb petrify

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

As a noun fossil is

fossil.

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

    fossil

    English

    (wikipedia fossil)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • The mineralized remains of an animal or plant.
  • (paleontology) Any preserved evidence of ancient life, including shells, imprints, burrows, coprolites, and organically-produced chemicals.
  • * {{quote-magazine, year=2012, month=March-April
  • , author=John T. Jost , title=Social Justice: Is It in Our Nature (and Our Future)? , volume=100, issue=2, page=162 , magazine=(American Scientist) citation , passage=He draws eclectically on studies of baboons, descriptive anthropological accounts of hunter-gatherer societies and, in a few cases, the fossil record.}}
  • (linguistics) A fossilized term.
  • (figuratively) Anything extremely old, extinct, or outdated.
  • Derived terms

    * * * fossilisation, fossilization * fossilise, fossilize * * * * * *

    See also

    * ----