Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To change into bone; become bony.
  • intransitive verb To become set in a rigidly conventional pattern.
  • intransitive verb To convert (a membrane or cartilage, for example) into bone.
  • intransitive verb To mold into a rigidly conventional pattern.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To make or form bone in or of; cause ossification in or of; convert into bone, as membrane or cartilage; harden like bone; render osseous.
  • To become bone; undergo ossification; change or be changed from soft tissue to bone.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb (Physiol.) To become bone; to change from a soft tissue to a hard bony tissue.
  • transitive verb (Physiol.) To form into bone; to change from a soft animal substance into bone, as by the deposition of lime salts.
  • transitive verb To harden.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive, intransitive To transform (or cause to transform) from a softer animal substance into bone; particularly the processes of growth in humans and animals.
  • verb transitive, intransitive, animate To become (or cause to become) inflexible and rigid in habits or opinions.
  • verb transitive, intransitive, inanimate To grow (or cause to grow) formulaic and permanent.
  • verb rare To calcify.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb make rigid and set into a conventional pattern
  • verb cause to become hard and bony
  • verb become bony

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin os, oss-, bone; see ost- in Indo-European roots + –fy.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin os, ossis ("bone") + -ify

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Examples

  • The party is both fanatical and well-informed, and thus unlikely either to "ossify" or "grow soft" and collapse.

    Doublethink 1995

  • At the same time, sure, "ossify" isn't exactly common parlance in most of our everyday exchanges, but it's not like it's a totally insane archaic thing that I dredged out of the OED, nor is Beau Geste this weird name that only the deepest scholars of French Algeria would know about (the movie was pretty big in its time ...).

    Filter Magazine info@filtermmm.com 2010

  • Woody Allen, like i say, i think of him in similar ways–went from funny-angry to just angry, real exploitive jerk in many ways, and god knows he logged in enough hours on the psych’s couch. i dunno. i think maybe it is a special hazard for people who become famous, but who knows–some people just kind of ossify at a certain point.

    Harlan Ellison Gropes Connie Willis 2006

  • It should make interesting reading for those who think that the sole purpose of an Academy is to ossify a language and prevent any change.

    The Spanish Royal Academy 2009

  • It should make interesting reading for those who think that the sole purpose of an Academy is to ossify a language and prevent any change.

    The Spanish Royal Academy 2009

  • Once you ossify guidelines into regulations governing payment, you run a great risk of freezing health care advancement.

    He's Not an Economist, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

  • This is the static prodigy phenomenon, where early gains ossify into a state of frowning and manfully borne stasis, a condition known in sports science as Huddlestone's Mooch.

    Enjoying the fleeting thrill of fragile prodigies is a national habit | Barney Ronay 2011

  • Both Dewey and Eliot are suggesting that without experiment in art and literature, the "supervention of novelty," the great works of the past merely ossify into a "tradition" that no longer inspires artists and writers to, in effect, outdo the "existing monuments," to bring those monuments into active communication with the present.

    John Dewey's *Art as Experience* 2010

  • National insurance was never meant to be indistinguishable from tax; it was meant to be a system of insurance in which all paid in to guard against life's major risks – unemployment, disability and old age – but then allowed to ossify.

    We deserve a fair society, but it won't be created by a vendetta against the poor Will Hutton 2010

  • It should make interesting reading for those who think that the sole purpose of an Academy is to ossify a language and prevent any change.

    9 posts from October 2009 2009

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