Definition of "fossilize"

fossilize

/ˈfɒs.ɪl.aɪz/

verb
third-person singular simple present fossilizes, present participle fossilizing, simple past and past participle fossilized
1. (transitive) to make into a fossil
  Quotations
  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.
  1989, Grant Naylor, Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers
2. (intransitive) to become a fossil
3. (figurative, by extension, intransitive) To become inflexible or outmoded.
  Quotations
  I was getting fossilised myself, but of late my stock of ideas has been very much enlarged.
  1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887
4. (figurative, by extension, transitive) To make antiquated, rigid, or fixed; to deaden.
  Quotations
  Ten layers of birthdays on a woman's head / Are apt to fossilize her girlish mirth.
  1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Eighth Book”, in Aurora Leigh, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1857
  I'll meet you againBlanketed in soilFossilized in photographs
  2013, Days N' Daze (lyrics and music), “Blue Jays”, in Rogue Taxidermy