How to Use ossify in a Sentence

ossify

verb

• The cartilage will ossify, becoming bone.
• At the end of the summer, the antlers ossify, and elk scrape the velvet off on trees.
  — The New Yorker, 7 Mar. 2022
• Sure, some of the show’s humor has ossified; parts have grown creaky and potentially perilous with age.
  — Richard Lawson, vanityfair.com, 26 Sep. 2017
• Ironize forms — such as the oral history or the rockumentary — that have ossified?
  — Lili Loofbourow, Washington Post, 3 Mar. 2023
• Nor is North Korea as ossified as outsiders might imagine.
  — Brook Larmer, New York Times, 18 Oct. 2017
• But once a baby takes its first breaths, its bone-forming cells are hard at work to ossify that cartilage—or turn it into sturdier bone—and join all the pieces together.
  — Alex Schwartz, Popular Science, 5 Feb. 2020
• The pattern has only ossified since then; two years later, Republicans set for a red tsunami, if not at least a red wave got a ripple instead.
  — Prem Thakker, The New Republic, 1 May 2023
• In 2015, when King Salman took the throne, the nation was ossifying, its royal court and bureaucracy bloated, sclerotic and by the accounts of many Saudis, deeply corrupt.
  — Nic Robertson, CNN, 12 June 2023
• While that belief is beginning to ossify among Republicans, a divide is brewing over Trump’s role in the party.
  — Bryan Schott, The Salt Lake Tribune, 13 Sep. 2021
• What started in part as an effort in 1958 to break up cop and firefighter unions in Charlotte soon ossified into a state law covering all public employees.
  — Nick Martin, The New Republic, 31 Jan. 2020
• In recent years, his vernacular rhythm has ossified into a dull pastiche of itself.
  — Richard Lawson, HWD, 13 Oct. 2017
• Unlike many people of their generation, Helen and Brice have not ossified in their emeritus years.
  — Douglas Friedman, Town & Country, 22 Oct. 2018
• Jako, dark-eyed glassine baby sardines, bodies ossified, taste like shattered deep-sea bacon.
  — Ligaya Mishan, New York Times, 12 Apr. 2018
• But: There is a risk that over time a firm’s social capital erodes, creativity flags, hierarchies ossify and team spirit fades, as Mr Hastings fears.
  — Daniel Tenreiro, National Review, 16 Sep. 2020
• The riots spread throughout Athens, then beyond into Thessaloniki and elsewhere in Europe, drawing many of the battle lines that would ossify once the Greek crisis erupted the following year.
  — Charly Wilder, New York Times, 18 June 2018
• Meanwhile, the connection between our government and our largest companies has ossified.
  — Nick Bilton, The Hive, 13 Apr. 2018
• Nadal, who has a longstanding foot problem because his navicular bone did not correctly ossify during childhood, was upbeat about his progress after his loss to Harris.
  — Ben Rothenberg, New York Times, 12 Aug. 2021
• Once born, however, a baby's bones begin to ossify, being surrounded and supplanted by harder, heavier bones.
  — Sam Walters, Discover Magazine, 3 Nov. 2023
• What should be an inward-looking referendum on whether to overhaul Italy’s ossified political and electoral system has taken on much broader import.
  — Jason Horowitz, New York Times, 2 Dec. 2016
• As the power of print and traditional media began to wane, television became the dominant form of media consumption, ossifying our metamorphosis to a chiefly visual culture.
  — Colin Scanlon, Redbook, 6 July 2023
• People care about identity, and a museum must set about ossifying the nebulous concept of collective identity into something tangible, something with plaques, displays and exhibits.
  — J.p Brammer, Los Angeles Times, 3 Aug. 2023
• In America some are already talking about regulating Facebook and other tech giants as utilities, forgetting that for decades, this ossified the telecommunications industry for decades.
  — The Economist, 22 Sep. 2017
• Instead of ossifying into an autocratic force, Kerala’s communists embraced electoral politics and since 1957 have been routinely voted into power.
  — Rick Noack, Washington Post, 2 Nov. 2017
• Leaving the European Union helped ossify the United Kingdom’s trajectory into a future of political intransigence, collapsing public services, stagnant wage growth, and periodic food rationing (this week being one of those periods).
  — Matt Ford, The New Republic, 25 Feb. 2023
• Revelations that at first seemed fatally poisonous to the presidency gradually ossified in Washington’s atmosphere.
  — Washington Post, 6 Feb. 2020

Last Updated: 5 Nov 2024