calcify
Americanverb (used with or without object)
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calcifies,
present (3rd person singular)
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calcified,
past participle, past
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calcifying
present participle
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Physiology. to make or become calcareous or bony; harden by the deposit of calcium salts.
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Geology. to harden by deposition of calcium carbonate.
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to make or become rigid or intransigent, as in a political position.
verb
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to convert or be converted into lime
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to harden or become hardened by impregnation with calcium salts
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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calcifysimple
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calcifiessimple
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have calcifiedperfect
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has calcifiedperfect
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am calcifyingprogressive
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are calcifyingprogressive
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is calcifyingprogressive
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have been calcifyingperfect progressive
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has been calcifyingperfect progressive
Past
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calcifiedsimple
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had calcifiedperfect
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was calcifyingprogressive
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were calcifyingprogressive
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had been calcifyingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of calcify
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The late economist Mancur Olson described the danger that, in democracies, interest groups proliferate that cause the government to calcify until it is unable to act.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 2, 2026
It’s McKellen reveling in a great role: charmingly funny but also bittersweet in the film’s examination of how fading fame can calcify one’s soul.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 8, 2026
But he said their stance "began to calcify into a sort of defensiveness".
From BBC ● Mar. 16, 2026
It’s to watch it harden and calcify in real time.
From Slate ● May 21, 2025
With each month of silence that passed between them, she felt the silence itself calcify, and become a hard and hulking statue, impossible to defeat.
From "Americanah" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Over time, income inequality calcifies into wealth inequality.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 4, 2026
Networking isn’t like traditional manufacturing or energy infrastructure where market share calcifies over decades.
From Barron's ● Nov. 26, 2025
And the fact that this has been allowed for so long calcifies in the culture of Capitol Hill to the point that it’s just accepted.
From Slate ● Oct. 5, 2022
These questions and contradictions must be taken up before the narrative around these attacks calcifies into something more sinister.
From New York Times ● Mar. 6, 2021
The center partly softens and partly calcifies into a grayish mortarlike mass, and is gritty.
From Special Report on Diseases of Cattle by United States. Bureau of Animal Industry
Still, credit the Administration for injecting more competition into a calcified U.S. defense industrial base.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 7, 2026
But they’d calcified and become larger, causing inflammation.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 12, 2026
Maybe you had high hopes, only to watch them crash against the sky-high cliffs of calcified Television Academy voters’ habits.
From Salon ● Jul. 9, 2026
The hope had been to bring in major new foreign investment and create jobs – real ones, away from the calcified state sector – for Saudi Arabia's large and ever-growing young population.
From BBC ● May 25, 2026
She could see how it had taken root, calcified, inflamed by his own guilt and shame.
From "The Girl Who Drank the Moon" by Kelly Barnhill
The study focuses on three major groups of calcifying plankton: coccolithophores, foraminifers, and pteropods.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 8, 2026
But amid the platitudes, sadness and shock is calcifying into anger and tension.
From BBC ● Dec. 21, 2025
More than any other company, Marvel has shown us how too many so-called event movies have a way of calcifying into a steady drip of business as usual.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 22, 2023
They know that, in special compartments, corals concentrate ions along with proteins and other molecules to make a slurry known as calcifying fluid.
From Science Magazine ● Oct. 24, 2023
Cal′cificā′tion, the process of calcifying, a changing into lime.—adjs.
From Chambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary (part 1 of 4: A-D) by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
