ossify
/ˈɑ.sə.faɪ/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.34 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
3
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
verb
To transform (or cause to transform) from a softer animal substance into bone; particularly the processes of growth in humans and animals.
verb
To calcify.
Example Sentences
- "[…], nor do all bones of the same skeleton ossify during the samе period of time."
- "Before long, the entire organization ossifies."
- "Possession of absolute knowledge would ossify the human spirit, quenching human creativity;"
- "This accidental repartition gets repeated, develops advantages of its own, and gradually ossifies into a systematic division of labour."
- "Now, in turn, we apply a revolutionary critique that […] ossifies into a rhetoric to become "the monstrous Latin of a monstrous church.""
- "[T]he charge threatens to ossify into conventional wisdom before the movie's audience can get to theaters to see how misguided it is."
Etymology
Back-formation from ossification, or modeled on French ossifier and formed from Latin os, ossis (“bone”) + -ify.
Origin
- Source language: French
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈɑ.sə.faɪ/
- British English: /ˈɒs.ɪ.faɪ/