petrify

Verb

petrify (third-person singular simple present petrifies, present participle petrifying, simple past and past participle petrified)

1. (transitive) 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 leaves1799, Richard Kirwan, Geological Essays
2. To produce rigidity akin to stone.
3. To immobilize with fright.

   Synonyms:

   alarm, affright, appall, dismay, fray, frighten, grill, give someone the shits, harrow, horrify

4. (intransitive) To become stone, or of a stony hardness, as organic matter by calcareous deposits.
5. (figuratively, intransitive) To become stony, callous, or obdurate.
   • Like Niobe we marble grow, / And petrify with grief.1685, John Dryden, Threnodia Augustalis
   • 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?1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], “The Result”, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 233
6. (figuratively, transitive) To make callous or obdurate; to stupefy; to paralyze; to transform; as by petrification.
   • petrify a genius to a dunce1728, [Alexander Pope], “(please specify the page)”, in The Dunciad. An Heroic Poem. […], Dublin; London: […] A. Dodd, →OCLC
   • A hideous fatalism, which ought, logically, to petrify your volition.1874, George Eliot, letter to Mrs. Ponsonby