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Apr 9, 2019
This week’s theme
Words related to bones

This week’s words
bred-in-the-bone
ossify
bonehead
Jell-O
bareboned

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A.Word.A.Day
with Anu Garg

ossify

PRONUNCIATION:
(OS-uh-fy)

MEANING:
verb tr., intr.:
1. To convert or change into bone.
2. To make or become rigid in thinking, attitudes, habits, etc.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin os (bone). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ost- (bone), which also gave us ossuary and ostracize. Earliest documented use: 1670.

USAGE:
“Mikhail Ugarov and Elena Gremina, playwrights who were husband and wife, were lamenting that Russian theater had grown ossified and distant from society’s problems.”
Sophia Kishkovsky; Moscow Theater Rebels, Husband and Wife, Are Dead; The New York Times; Jun 8, 2018.

See more usage examples of ossify in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Bad weather always looks worse through a window. -Tom Lehrer, singer-songwriter and mathematician (b. 9 Apr 1928)

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