to ossify
1
9.5
- verb
- /ˈɑːsɪfaɪ/
:
endurecer
- The company's management started to ossify, refusing to consider any new ideas from their employees.
And our whole system has become ossified.
- And our whole system has become ossified.
- And if we're all making babies at all times, doesn't that ossify who and what we are in the tree of life?
Examples
-
Obedience ossifies knowledge into dogma.
Academic text (2007) -
What is more, the knowledge they claim is less likely to become ossified by ideological orthodoxies.
Academic text (2004) -
As monopolies ossify, people find ways to blow them up.
-
And if we're all making babies at all times, doesn't that ossify who and what we are in the tree of life?
-
We loved her because she was young and beautiful and had not yet become ossified into a part of the bureaucracy.
Fiction book (1996) -
Of course not, because we have a system that's been in place for hundreds of years that has grown into a an ossified machine.
-
All past oligarchies have fallen from power either because they ossified or because they grew soft.
Blog text (14) -
Otherwise, policymakers risk putting training dollars into ossified programs that will prepare workers for jobs that simply do not exist.
Blog text (10) -
A game metaphor must be implemented consistently enough to show that education has structure but should not ossify the rules into automatic "givens."
Academic text (1997) -
Institutionalized profiling can ossify a mind, and a person's mind is the most important security countermeasure we have.
Blog text (34)
Synonyms
45
6.7
To make an idea or belief so strong that it is hard to change
1
6.8
Become fixed and unable to change, often about ideas or systems
1
8.4
Become fixed and hard to change, especially in ideas or rules
1
6.7
To make something unable to change by keeping it in old ways
1
8.2
To make something stiff and unable to bend or change
To become fixed and hard to change, often about attitudes or customs
To become fixed and not open to new ideas, often in organizations
Antonyms
How Rigid
Surface Forms
Morphology
ossify = osseous (semi-transparent) = oss + ify
Morphologically clear as 'oss-' + '-ify', but the non-literal meaning ('become rigid or fixed') is a metaphorical extension that may not be directly inferable by learners unfamiliar with the combining form or the figurative use.
Etymology
The word ossify comes from the Latin root os meaning 'bone', so it brings the image of becoming hard like a bone. That's why to ossify a habit or idea means to become 'rigid' and unwilling to change.