🦴 Not hardened 🌱 Still flexible

unossified

9.9

Not turned into bone and still soft

adjective
/ˌʌnˈɑːsɪfaɪd/

Specialized

: no osificado

Newborns have many unossified areas in their skulls to allow for growth during early development.

Examples

The foot consists of 26 bones, although most are cartilaginous and unossified at birth.

Academic text (2005)
The multiple physes (which are radiolucent on X-ray) and unossified epiphyses in young children can make fracture identification quite difficult (Eiff & Hatch, 2003).

Academic text (2006)
In some fish species, the cartilage remains unossified even in adulthood, allowing for greater flexibility.
The veterinarian explained that the unossified parts of the puppy's joints would harden as it aged.

Synonyms

uncalcified

vsunossified

Specialized

7.4

Not made hard by calcium in bones, shells, or cartilage

refers to lack of conversion into bone or bone-like hardening

unhardened

vsunossified

Specialized

6.3

Not fully solid after making, like metal or mortar

implies absence of becoming bone rather than mere incomplete hardening

Antonyms

ossified

2 9.3

Very fixed and unwilling to change, often stuck in old ways

hardened

4.1

Made solid by heating, drying, or other treatment

How Ossified

ossified

2 9.3

unossified

Specialized

9.9

cartilaginous

Specialized

1 7.9

Surface Forms

unossified positive

unossifieder comparative

unossifiedest superlative

Morphology

unossified = ossified (transparent) = un + ossify + ed

Formed by adding negative prefix 'un-' to 'ossified' (meaning turned to bone), so the literal medical sense 'not turned into bone' is directly deducible.

Etymology

Unossified is made of the prefix un- ('not') and ossified, from the old root oss- meaning 'bone'. So unossified literally means 'not turned into bone', which fits the real meaning that parts of a baby or some animals stay soft and not yet bone.