fossilize

• fossilise

fossil +‎ -ize

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈfɒs.ɪl.aɪz/, /ˈfɒsl̩aɪz/

fossilize (third-person singular simple present fossilizes, present participle fossilizing, simple past and past participle fossilized)

1. (transitive) to make into a fossil
   • 1989, Grant Naylor, Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers:

     Most of the booths had been scooped clean by the scalpel-sharp corner of the glacier in the crash. Three remained. Two of them were punctured and, inside, the once-human occupants had been fossilized into the walls by centuries upon centuries of patient ice.

2. (intransitive) to become a fossil
3. (figurative, by extension, intransitive) To become inflexible or outmoded.
   • 1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

     I was getting fossilised myself, but of late my stock of ideas has been very much enlarged.

4. (figurative, by extension, transitive) To make antiquated, rigid, or fixed; to deaden.
   • 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Eighth Book”, in Aurora Leigh, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1857, →OCLC:

     Ten layers of birthdays on a woman's head / Are apt to fossilize her girlish mirth.

• (To become a fossil): fossilate (dated), fossilify (dated)

• fossilization