fossilized
Americanadjective
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(of the remains of an organism) having organic substances replaced with mineral ones; converted into a fossil.
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rigidly antiquated.
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having become the lifeless or disused remains of something; being merely a trace of the past.
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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.
Using a combination of advanced laboratory methods, including protein sequencing and several forms of mass spectrometry, scientists detected remnants of collagen embedded within the fossilized bone.
From Science Daily • May 14, 2026
Are they fossilized Martian microbes that lived billions of years ago when the planet next door was a wetter, warmer world?
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 23, 2026
Over time, more bees followed, using these natural cavities inside fossilized bones as ready-made nesting sites.
From Science Daily • Apr. 3, 2026
This was a fossilized program taking on a divisive, peripatetic local who’d pledged his prior job was going to be his “last job.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 23, 2026
By morning light, the books are all hunched together again with their spines turned out, fossilized, inanimate.
From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
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.
