Some 16th-century Italian clergymen tried to ban coffee because they believed it to be “satanic.” However, Pope Clement VII loved coffee so much that he lifted the ban and had coffee baptized in 1600.
PETRIFIES
Verb
petrifies
Third-person singular simple present indicative form of petrify
Source: Wiktionary
PETRIFY
Pet"ri*fy, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Petrified; p. pr. & vb. n. Petrifying.] Etym: [L. petra rock, Gr. -fy: cf. F. pétrifier. Cf. Parrot, Petrel, Pier.]
1. To convert, as any animal or vegetable matter, into stone or stony substance. A river that petrifies any sort of wood or leaves. Kirwan.
2. To make callous or obdurate; to stupefy; to paralyze; to transform; as by petrifaction; as, to petrify the heart. Young. "Petrifying accuracy." Sir W. Scott. And petrify a genius to a dunce. Pope. The poor, petrified journeyman, quite unconscious of what he was doing. De Quincey. A hideous fatalism, which ought, logically, to petrify your volition. G. Eliot.
Pet"ri*fy, v. i.
1. To become stone, or of a stony hardness, as organic matter by calcareous deposits.
2. Fig.: To become stony, callous, or obdurate. Like Niobe we marble grow, And petrify with grief. Dryden.
Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition
Recent Word Finds
Word of the Day
29 June 2024
INITIALISM
(noun) an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of the several words in the name and pronounced separately; “HTML is an initialism for HyperText Markup Language”
Coffee Trivia
