Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To convert into a fossil.
- v. To make outmoded or inflexible with time; antiquate.
- v. To become a fossil.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To reduce to a fossil condition; convert into a fossil: as, to fossilize bones or wood.
- To render like a fossil; cause to become antiquated or out of harmony with present time and circumstances and the progress of ideas: as, age has a tendency to fossilize men's minds and ideas.
- To become or be changed into a fossil.
- To become antiquated or obsolete; become out of harmony with the present time and circumstances by falling behind the progress of ideas.
- Also spelled fossilise.
Wiktionary
- v. intransitive to become a fossil
- v. by extension, intransitive to become inflexible or outmoded
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To convert into a fossil; to petrify.
- v. To cause to become antiquated, rigid, or fixed, as by fossilization; to mummify; to deaden.
- v. To become fossil.
- v. To become antiquated, rigid, or fixed, beyond the influence of change or progress.
WordNet 3.0
- v. convert to a fossil
- v. become mentally inflexible
Examples
“Otherwise, there is a danger that they will simply mark time as language learners, or even – to use a now fairly discredited term – fossilize.”
“State politics fossilize; Democrats see little reason to give up the spending they like if enough Republicans won't meet them anywhere close to the middle.”
The Washington Post: Wisconsin governor's -- and the GOP's -- strange 'budget discipline'
“Though brains don't normally fossilize, we do have a great deal of fossil evidence revealing the long evolutionary history of chordates.”
“Zachriel: Brains don't normally fossilize, but we know that human brains fit the nested hierarchy, that human brains are comprised of modifications of structures found in related organisms, that craniates follow a long, diversifying path of evolutionary history, and that humans are derived hominids.”
“Brains don't normally fossilize, but we know that human brains fit the nested hierarchy, that human brains are comprised of modifications of structures found in related organisms, that craniates follow a long, diversifying path of evolutionary history, and that humans are derived hominids.”
“Microbes can flash fossilize and presto, you can have a microfossil that registers as extraterrestrial when it was alive on Earth not that long before.”
“Within several months, the ash will simply blow away into the atmospheric background or fossilize to form new rock.”
“Because the very real challenge we have is to remove the thumb on the scale when it comes to favoring fossilized sunshine and one of the most expedient ways to do that is to even up the playing field for competitive energy products and services by giving the market good information on the price or value of the millions of years it takes to fossilize sunshine.”
The Huffington Post: Alison Wise: The Clean Economist: Framing the Future
“So now I'm going to use them before they begin to fossilize.”
“(The Phanerozoic is the last 530 million years of geologic history, when there's an abundant fossil record of multicellular creatures with hard parts -- bones, shells, and so on -- that can fossilize.)”
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