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
"Apparently they just sort of die down and they calcify basically. So at this point they are now calcified."
From BBC ● Jun. 30, 2026
McKellar: The show is also about how ideologies sort of calcify and end up alienating people, even though they have noble aspirations at the beginning.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 30, 2024
Unlike medaka, the zebrafish form a transient scar that doesn't calcify into rigid tissue.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 18, 2024
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
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
Boredom sometimes calcifies into loneliness, and for Daisy, the birds seemed to fix a problem I didn’t even know she had.
From New York Times ● Dec. 7, 2021
Emotions often drive reasoning, so as our hearts harden, our thinking also calcifies, and we become dogmatic.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 4, 2016
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
The mouse model represented early fibrotic changes rather than advanced, heavily calcified aortic stenosis.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 12, 2026
The later denial of his motion did not cool his grievances, but calcified them.
From Slate ● May 28, 2026
Victor then flips back to an earlier chapter, before their graduation, to a time when Agnes seems less calcified in her idiosyncrasies.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 27, 2025
Pre-op checks had indicated Mrs Readhead's left side was to be used for the TAVI, as her right side had some blockages because of calcified arteries.
From BBC ● Jun. 4, 2025
When José Arcadio Buendía and the four men of his expedition managed to take the armor apart, they found inside a calcified skeleton with a copper locket containing a woman’s hair around its neck.
From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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
Both lungs contained calcifying tubercle; the abdomen was loaded with fat; the spleen was soft; the kidneys were engorged, but otherwise healthy.
From Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine by Walter L. (Walter Lytle) Pyle
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.
