petrify

verb

Etymology: From Middle French pétrifier, from Medieval Latin petrificāre, from Latin petra (“rock”), from Ancient Greek πέτρα (pétra, “rock”) + -ficāre, from facere (“do, make”), equivalent to petro- + -ify.

1. To turn to stone: to harden organic matter by permeating with water and depositing dissolved minerals.

   “a river that petrifies any sort of wood or leaves”

2. To produce rigidity akin to stone.
3. To immobilize with fright.
4. To become stone, or of a stony hardness, as organic matter by calcareous deposits.
5. To become stony, callous, or obdurate.

   “Like Niobe we marble grow, / And petrify with grief.”

   “Hopes, feelings, and passion, petrify one after another; the crust of experience soon hardens over the hidden past; and who, looking on the levelled and subdued exterior, could dream of the wreck and ravage that lies below?”

6. To make callous or obdurate; to stupefy; to paralyze; to transform; as by petrification.

   “petrify a genius to a dunce”

   “A hideous fatalism, which ought, logically, to petrify your volition.”