How to Use petrified in a Sentence

petrified

adjective
  • Some of the best displays of petrified logs can be seen along the short Crystal Forest Trail.
    Roger Naylor, The Arizona Republic, 19 May 2021
  • The plant people have their petrified forests and fossil fronds.
    Jennifer Frazer, Scientific American, 4 Mar. 2021
  • Does the mere thought of investing leave you petrified?
    Serenity Gibbons, Forbes, 22 June 2021
  • Some people are freaked out by any taxidermy (me), never mind the petrified remains of a beloved pet.
    John Hodgman, New York Times, 29 Sep. 2022
  • The other, a dinosaur jaw, turned out to be a chunk of petrified wood that mollusks had burrowed into.
    Joshua Sokol, New York Times, 21 Feb. 2023
  • Interspersed in the red stone were narrow bands of black shale containing petrified fish, from a time when a deep lake covered the area.
    Douglas Fox, Discover Magazine, 2 Apr. 2015
  • And there’s a tempting heresy in the idea of being aroused by apocalypse, as Blanchett’s character is, rather than petrified or numbed.
    Anthony Lane, The New Yorker, 10 Dec. 2021
  • For example, at Arva, the petrified wood in the ceiling is meant to be reminiscent of the sandy bottoms of the Mediterranean Sea.
    Rachel King, Fortune, 31 Dec. 2022
  • Saunders added warmth to the space by wrapping the exhaust hood in 10-inch planks of oak—the same material used for the floors upstairs—and used a petrified wood from India for the island.
    Courtney Hazlett, Robb Report, 31 Oct. 2021
  • While the Dogman is only known to leave paw prints and petrified witnesses behind, at least one person is rumored to have died of fright.
    Kylie Martin, Detroit Free Press, 8 Aug. 2023
  • Per his wishes, Steve was laid to rest in Santa Monica in a green cemetery with a petrified wood headstone.
    Jesse Hyde, Town & Country, 20 Oct. 2020
  • In the gift shop your brother chases you around a rack of oven mitts with a petrified alligator head until your table is called.
    Casey McQuiston, Bon Appétit, 22 June 2022
  • The petrified family heard glass break as militants broke into the home.
    Bryan Pietsch, Washington Post, 13 Dec. 2023
  • The girls sat — almost touching — in petrified silence.
    Seija Rankin, EW.com, 8 July 2021
  • In addition to petrified wood, the sharp-eyed spotter can see marine and insect fossils.
    Nicole Ludden, The Arizona Republic, 23 Apr. 2020
  • The Rainbow Forest Museum is a starting point for hiking trails to the famous petrified logs.
    Anne Olivia Bauso, Travel + Leisure, 22 Aug. 2020
  • The same goes for cultural artifacts, antlers, petrified wood, or rocks.
    Erin Strout, SELF, 8 June 2022
  • Still, the renowned petrified logs, once part of an ancient tropical forest before they were felled by river systems millions of years ago, are a sight to behold.
    J.d. Simkins, Sunset Magazine, 11 Apr. 2022
  • Forty tons of petrified remnants of the Caledonian forest, which had been washed by a loch and bleached by the sun, arrived from the Scottish Highlands on a double-length truck and were dumped beside the glad, looking like a huge pile of bones.
    Town & Country, 28 Apr. 2023
  • The monument will consist of sculptures resembling petrified banyan trees in tribute to the villages where many of the city’s Chinese immigrants came from.
    Paul Pringle, Los Angeles Times, 5 May 2023
  • Is the petrified upper lip of past royal protocol a handicap now?
    Patt Morrison, Los Angeles Times, 8 Mar. 2021
  • Then there were my parents’ collections of books and Japanese and German prints, American quilts and vintage fabrics, petrified stones and hunks of coral.
    Hanya Yanagihara, New York Times, 21 Mar. 2023
  • Paleontologists know this not from petrified bones but from marks left in the sediment by the living creatures.
    Riley Black, Smithsonian Magazine, 29 Mar. 2023
  • An employee emerged from a hallway with a petrified woman in a periwinkle nightgown.
    Caitlin McGlade, The Arizona Republic, 19 Mar. 2024
  • Choose the type that meets your decorating needs. Create the petrified poses of croquet-playing Halloween skeletons by tying them with fishing line to long stakes pushed into the ground.
    Sarah Martens, Better Homes & Gardens, 12 Sep. 2022
  • Conifers, fruit producing trees, sequoia trees, pine, palm, cinnamon and oak trees are among the specimens uncovered in the petrified forest.
    Amy Woodyatt, CNN, 25 Feb. 2021
  • Hike winding trails, like the one-mile Petrified Forest loop through ancient lava trails, and check out petrified dinosaur bones and shell fossils at the visitors center.
    Nina Kokotas Hahn, Condé Nast Traveler, 12 Jan. 2023
  • Topped with a globe of amber housing a petrified mosquito inside, that cane was the first building block in engineering dinosaurs for the fictional park.
    Matt Donnelly, Variety, 25 Aug. 2021
  • The objects surrounding the copper wave—slabs of granite, petrified wood and a pool of water—not only block sections of the text from photographs, but also contribute to the larger puzzle.
    Theresa MacHemer, Smithsonian Magazine, 31 Jan. 2020
  • His 17-year-old, Alabama, recently shared that her friends were petrified of him because of his hardcore exterior.
    Amy Kaufman, Los Angeles Times, 29 Oct. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'petrified.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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