Petrify vs Putrefy - What's the difference?
petrify | putrefy |
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)
To become filled with a pus-like or bile-like substance.
To reach an advanced stage of decomposition.
To become gangrenous.
To make morbid, carious, or gangrenous.
To corrupt; to make foul.
* Francis Bacon
* Shakespeare
As verbs the difference between petrify and putrefy
is that petrify is to harden organic matter by permeating with water and depositing dissolved minerals while putrefy is to become filled with a pus-like or bile-like substance.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.
Synonyms
* See alsoputrefy
English
Verb
(en-verb)- to putrefy an ulcer or wound
- Private suits do putrefy the public good.
- They would but stink, and putrefy the air.