ossify

/'ɔsifai/
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Thân thiện
ossify

The disease can ossify soft tissue over time.

Definition

  1. Verb (transitive):

    • To cause to become hard and bony: To convert (tissue, especially cartilage) into bone or a bony substance through the deposition of calcium salts.
    • To make rigid and set into a conventional pattern: To cause (an idea, system, or person) to become rigidly fixed, unprogressive, or resistant to change.

  2. Verb (intransitive):

    • To become bony: To change into bone or a bone-like substance.
    • To become rigidly conventional or resistant to change: To become inflexible in attitudes, habits, or ideas.
Usage Examples
  • Verb (transitive):
    • The disease can ossify the soft cartilage in the joints.
    • Years of bureaucracy have ossified the institution's decision-making process.
  • Verb (intransitive):
    • The cartilage in the fracture site will gradually ossify as it heals.
    • His political views seemed to ossify as he grew older, refusing to adapt to new evidence.
Advanced Usage
  • "to ossify into": to harden or solidify into a fixed state.
    • Their initial disagreement eventually ossified into a permanent stalemate.
  • Used in a figurative, often critical, sense to describe institutions, traditions, or thinking.
    • The company's culture had ossified, stifling all innovation.
Variants and Related Words
  • Ossification (n): The process of becoming or causing to become bony; the process of becoming rigidly conventional.
    • The ossification of the skeleton is complete by early adulthood.
    • The ossification of management structures led to the firm's decline.
  • Ossified (adj): Having turned into bone; (figuratively) rigidly conventional.
    • An ossified fossil.
    • An ossified bureaucracy.
Synonyms
  • Harden (to become or make hard).
  • Solidify (to make or become solid or firm).
  • Rigidify (to make or become rigid).
  • Petrify (to make or become rigid or inert, like stone; often used figuratively for ideas).
Antonyms
  • Flexibilize (to make flexible).
  • Adapt (to adjust to new conditions).
  • Liquefy (to make or become liquid).
Related Phrases / Figurative Use
  • Ossified thinking: Refers to a mindset that is rigid, unchanging, and resistant to new ideas.
    • The project failed due to the team's ossified thinking.
  • To become ossified: A common phrase describing the process of becoming rigid.
    • Without new challenges, any skill can become ossified.
ossify

The disease can ossify soft tissue over time.

Verb
  1. cause to become hard and bony
    • The disease ossified the tissue
  2. make rigid and set into a conventional pattern
    • rigidify the training schedule
    • ossified teaching methods
    • slogans petrify our thinking
  3. become bony
    • The tissue ossified

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