Petrify vs Terrify - What's the difference?
petrify | terrify |
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 frighten greatly; to fill with terror.
To menace or intimidate.
(obsolete) To make terrible.
Terrify is a synonym of petrify.
As verbs the difference between petrify and terrify
is that petrify is to harden organic matter by permeating with water and depositing dissolved minerals while terrify is to frighten greatly; to fill with terror.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.