PETRIFY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Petrify

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/pˈɛtrəfˌaɪ/ Listen

verb

Petrify v. t. (past & past part. petrified; pres. part. petrifying)

1.

To convert, as any animal or vegetable matter, into stone or stony substance; as, petrified wood. "A river that petrifies any sort of wood or leaves."

2.

To make callous or obdurate; to transform, as by petrifaction; as, to petrify the heart. Young. "Petrifying accuracy." "And petrify a genius to a dunce." "A hideous fatalism, which ought, logically, to petrify your volition."

3.

To paralyze, especially with fear; to stupefy; as, she was petrified by the sight of the bear in her tent. "The poor, petrified journeyman, quite unconscious of what he was doing."

Petrify v. i.

1.

To become stone, or of a stony hardness, as organic matter by calcareous deposits.

2.

Fig.: To become stony, callous, or obdurate. "Like Niobe we marble grow, And petrify with grief."

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Etymology of 'Petrify'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Petrify" Quotes from Famous Books

... senses whelm'd In deluge o'er the earth-born man, then turn'd the fluxile eyes Into two stationary orbs, concentrating all things. The ever-varying spiral ascents to the heavens of heavens Were bended downward, and the nostrils' golden gates shut, Turn'd outward, barr'd, and petrify'd against the infinite. ...

— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon

... in kind, but all deep of the one colour. And as the frantic wielders of these weapons snatched them from the stream of sparks and tore away into the streets, the same red hue was red in their frenzied eyes;—eyes which any unbrutalised beholder would have given twenty years of life, to petrify ...

— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... Liverpool at the outset of October that this announcement came. "I have made a short reading of the murder in Oliver Twist. I cannot make up my mind, however, whether to do it or not. I have no doubt that I could perfectly petrify an audience by carrying out the notion I have of the way of rendering it. But whether the impression would not be so horrible as to keep them away another time, is what I cannot satisfy myself upon. What do you think? It is in three ...

— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... abhor what is profound. Women also will always find local miracle more easy to understand than universal miracle, and the visible objective intervention of God more probable than his psychological and inward action. The Latin world by its mental form is doomed to petrify its abstractions, and to remain forever outside the inmost sanctuary of life, that central hearth where ideas are still undivided, without shape or determination. The Latin mind makes everything objective, because ...

— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Nature, and Love a conspiracy; whose law is an iron chain and whose mercy is debility and chagrin; the blind fiend who would impose his own blindness; that unfruitful loin which curses fertility; that stony heart which would petrify the generations of man; before whom life withers away appalled and death would shudder again to its tomb. Repentance! they wiped the inadequate ooze from their eyes and danced joyfully for spite. They could do no more, so ...

— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens

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