Ossify

 WORD OF THE DA Y

ossify / verb / AH-suh-fye

Definition
1: to change into bone
2: to become hardened or conventional and opposed to change
3: to change (a material, such as cartilage) into bone
4: to make rigidly conventional and opposed to change

Examples
"The cultural revolution was the product of Mao's fear, if not paranoia. He worried that the communist party was becoming ossified and selfish careerists were taking over."
— Michael Carey, The Alaska Dispatch News, 13 May 2021

For these writers, the ossified ideologies of the world, imbedded in the communal imagination, block vision, and as artists they respond not by criticism from without but by confrontation from within.
—Robert Coover, The New York Times Book Review, 18 Mar. 1984

Did You Know?
The skeletons of mammals originate as soft cartilage that gradually transforms into hard bone (in humans, the process begins in the womb and continues until late adolescence).
This bone-building process has been called ossification since the late 17th century, and the verb ossify arrived soon after the noun.
Both terms have come to refer to figurative types of hardening, such as that of the heart, mind, or soul.
The words come from the Latin root os, meaning "bone."
Os has also entered English as a synonym of bone in scientific contexts.