ossify
IPA: ˈɑsʌfaɪ
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.
- (transitive, intransitive, animate) To become (or cause to become) inflexible and rigid in habits or opinions.
- (transitive, intransitive, inanimate) To grow (or cause to grow) formulaic and permanent.
- (rare) To calcify.
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Examples of "ossify" in Sentences
- The party is both fanatical and well-informed, and thus unlikely either to "ossify" or "grow soft" and collapse.
- Once you ossify guidelines into regulations governing payment, you run a great risk of freezing health care advancement.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 ...).
- 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.
- 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.
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