Definition of "ankylosis"
noun
countable and uncountable, plural ankyloses
(figuratively) An onset of stiffness or inflexibility.
Quotations
Yet in using the word democracy, one must plead for a distinction, or, better, a reversion, indicated by the curious anchylosis that, at a certain point in their maturity, usually sets in upon words newly put in use to express some august and large spiritual reality.
1914, Brand Whitlock, Forty Years of It, introduction