ossify

Or am I about to do something that is going to reinforce these divisions and ossify the boundaries between people?

From Salon ● Mar. 6, 2023

He noted that true babies would probably not ossify into fossils, as their bones are too small.

From New York Times ● Apr. 29, 2022

We know, for example, that when you hit your 60s and 70s, vocal folds weaken, cartilage in the larynx begins to ossify and respiratory systems that power voices start to work less efficiently.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 25, 2021

If we become convinced that we have figured things out, our creative endeavors—whether scientific, artistic, spiritual or political—might ossify.

From Scientific American ● Sep. 20, 2021

But the rough soldier who commanded the executioners had no prejudices or hatred to blind his eyes and ossify his heart.

From Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Mark by Maclaren, Alexander

Despite their reputation for being ossified, “many major European companies are malleable now,” says Sarah Ketterer, chief executive of Causeway Capital Management, a Los Angeles-based global investment firm.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026

There are the ossified standbys—YouTube, TikTok, Instagram—platforms that are lucky enough to be piloted by someone who does not possess Musk’s deeply unserious, mean-spirited disposition.

From Slate ● Jul. 27, 2023

Since then, the sprawling content business that the New York Times Book Review mystery columnist Sarah Weinman has called the true-crime industrial complex has matured and ossified.

From New York Times ● Feb. 22, 2023

Coasting on his prewar renown, he won elections to Congress and as governor of Massachusetts, but he did little but make new enemies and dismay old friends: “The resolve ossified to rigidity.”

From Washington Post ● Nov. 11, 2022

First surprise flitted over his features, then it ossified to hostility.

From "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

It manifests now in a brittleness that tints their everyday exchanges as ossifying empty nesters.

From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 20, 2026

“It amounts to ossifying the damage that DeJoy managed to do over the last year,” they said.

From Slate ● Mar. 23, 2021

That change of policy tack may jar ossifying market expectations.

From Reuters ● Aug. 3, 2016

The free-spirited energy of their early communications can be seen slowly ossifying into the discourse of eminences too busy being famous to be friends.

From New York Times ● Jul. 19, 2010

The ossifying conviction that he was living out some ancient and preordained plan, encoded in his blood, built into the architecture of his name.

From "The Serpent King" by Jeff Zentner