v. [f. FOSSIL sb. + -IZE. Cf. F. fossiliser.]
1. a. trans. To turn or change into a fossil.
1794. Hunter, in Phil. Trans., LXXXIV. 407. Bones that are fossilized become so in the medium in which they were deposited at the animal’s death.
1854. F. C. Bakewell, Geol., 32. ‘Petrifying wells,’ as they are called, do not, however, fossilize the things put into them; for if the articles be broken, the original structure will be seen, the deposition of lime being only external.
1878. Huxley, Physiography, 229. There is much more likelihood that the remains of animals and plants which live in the sea, or in rivers, or which haunt marshes and lakes, should be fossilized, than that those of the dwellers on dry land should be so preserved.
b. intr. To become, or be changed into, a fossil.
1828. in Webster; and in later Dicts.
2. fig. a. trans. ‘To cause to become antiquated, rigid, or fixed’; ‘to place beyond the influence of change or progress’ (Webster, 1864); rarely, to preserve as if in fossil form. b. intr. for refl.
a. 1856. Mrs. Browning, Aur. Leigh, VIII. 532.
| Ten layers of birthdays on a woman’s head | |
| Are apt to fossilise her girlish mirth. |
1862. R. H. Patterson, Ess. Hist. & Art, 98. Poetry,—which last century became temporarily fossilised from a slavish worship, not indeed of art-principles, but of antiquated models.
1877. A. B. Edwards, Up Nile, iv. 100. Sakkarah fossilises the name of Sokari, one of the special denominations of the Memphite Osiris.
b. 1864. Webster, Fossilize, to become antiquated, rigid, or fixed, beyond the influence of change or progress.
1888. Co-op. News, XIX. 2 June, 549–50. Its leaders in all years have placed its moral claims before this, and it is upon these it must flourish, if it is to flourish, and not fossilize.
3. intr. To search for fossils. colloq.
1845. Lyell, Trav. N. Amer., I. 158. I fossilized for three days very diligently at Shell Bluff, obtaining more than forty species of shells.
Hence Fossilized ppl. a.; Fossilizing vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1819. G. S. Faber, Dispensations (1823), I. 124. No proper fossilized portion of the human subject has ever yet been detected in the midst of this multitude of animal and vegetable fossils.
18[?]. Lyell, Princ. Geol. (1853), I. I. xiii. 193. These areas, as we have seen, are always shifting their position; so that the fossilizing process, by means of which the commemoration of the particular state of the organic world, at any given time, is affected, may be said to move about, visiting and revisiting different tracts in succession.
1861. Stanley, Lect. Eccl. Hist., p. xxxviii. In the usages of the ancient systems which have grown up on that soil—Coptic, Greek, Asiatic—we may still trace the relics, the fossilised relics, of the old Imperial Church.
1887. Frith, Autobiog., I. xviii. 228. The Academy ‘has changed all that,’ as well as other fossilized rules as much requiring abolishment.
1891. Athenæum, 28 Nov., 715/1. He ascribes, as a few of the more liberal English writers on the subject have ascribed, most of the defects of modern Islam to the fossilizing influence of the patristic theologians.
