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

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

Nadal, who has a longstanding foot problem because his navicular bone did not correctly ossify during childhood, was upbeat about his progress after his loss to Harris.

From New York Times ● Aug. 12, 2021

All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away; all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.

From Manifesto of the Communist Party by Marx, Karl

Like every other detail here, that implicit complaint is dusty and ossified, and Mr. Williamson’s formerly wised-up dialogue has been supplanted by a grinding earnestness, with everyone constantly asking about one another’s feelings.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 26, 2026

Unlike the ossified networks, DePetro is free to churn out content whenever he wants, for an audience keen to follow the investigation through 90-second updates.

From Slate ● Feb. 23, 2026

Ironize forms — such as the oral history or the rockumentary — that have ossified?

From Washington Post ● Mar. 3, 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

All past oligarchies have fallen from power either because they ossified or because they grew soft.

From "1984" by George Orwell

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

Instead of ossifying into an autocratic force, Kerala’s communists embraced electoral politics and since 1957 have been routinely voted into power.

From Washington Post ● Oct. 26, 2017

That change of policy tack may jar ossifying market expectations.

From Reuters ● Aug. 3, 2016

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