PETRIFY

To convert, as any animal or vegetable matter, into stone or stony substance. A river that petrifies any sort of wood or leaves. Kirwan.

To make callous or obdurate; to stupefy; to paralyze; to transform; as by petrifaction; as, to petrify the heart. Young. "Petrifying accuracy." Sir W. Scott. And petrify a genius to a dunce. Pope. The poor, petrified journeyman, quite unconscious of what he was doing. De Quincey. A hideous fatalism, which ought, logically, to petrify your volition. G. Eliot.

To become stone, or of a stony hardness, as organic matter by calcareous deposits.

Fig.: To become stony, callous, or obdurate. Like Niobe we marble grow, And petrify with grief. Dryden.