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Ossified

   Also found in: Medical, Legal, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia 0.01 sec.
os·si·fy  (s-f)
v. os·si·fied, os·si·fy·ing, os·si·fies
v.intr.
1. To change into bone; become bony.
2. To become set in a rigidly conventional pattern: "The central ideas of liberalism have ossified" (Jeffrey Hart).
v.tr.
1. To convert (a membrane or cartilage, for example) into bone.
2. To mold into a rigidly conventional pattern.

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

os·sific (-sfk) adj.
ThesaurusLegend:  Synonyms Related Words Antonyms
Adj.1.ossified - set in a rigidly conventional pattern of behavior, habits, or beliefs; "obsolete fossilized ways"; "an ossified bureaucratic system"
inflexible - incapable of change; "a man of inflexible purpose"


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He was certainly serious--a twinge of ossified conscience or something; and so I considered with grave deliberation for a moment.
Many of them get ossified with the dry diet; self-control is so continually their thought, so perpetually their object, that at last it absorbs the softer and more agreeable qualities of their nature; and they die mere models of austerity, fashioned out of a little parchment and much bone.
He drew his hands down his face, and it emerged, bony, unchanged of expression, as if all the tissues had been ossified.
 
 
 
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