Do we say petrifaction or petrification

petrifaction 23 occurrences

On the right, with its ruined mosque and conning-tower grey in the morning light, the massive pile of Shivner frowns over the valley, like some dismasted battleship, hurled upwards into sudden petrifaction by the hands of Titans.

She stood fixed as if turned to stone, in an attitude which for one fleeting instant recalled that of the sculptured figures undergoing sudden petrifaction at the sight of the Gorgon's head.

The leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that petrifaction of a hearth had never known in Scrooge's time, or Marley's, or for many and many a winter season gone.

The petrifaction will be carried a little farther than usual, and, when the bell rings and the official calls out, "Train made up for Babel, Hinnom, and way stations?"

Perhaps the process might be more aptly called one of petrifaction.

Hardness N. hardness &c adj.; rigidity; renitence^, renitency; inflexibility, temper, callosity, durity^. induration, petrifaction; lapidification^, lapidescence^; vitrification, ossification; crystallization.

I have myself seen a small basket filled with plovers' eggs become in eight days a perfect petrifaction.

He presented me a petrifaction picked up on Drummond Island, and looked at my cabinet with interest.

At the base of the fall we found a large petrifaction of wood imbedded in the debris of the falling cement and slate rock.

So it is not strange that a people whose daily hours were counted out with the music of belfries were fond of fretting their towers with workmanship so precious and delicate that it has been called "the petrifaction of music.

Got up to Pagliano's a petrifaction!

"Wars are terrible, but necessary, for they save the State from social petrifaction and stagnation.

This porous material possessed the additional advantage, when combined with good cement, of rendering the arched surface one united petrifaction, opposing (in consequence of its firm union) little lateral pressure, comparatively, against the sustaining walls.

If the former had not been filled with hardened petrifying matter, they would have been compressed and flattened like those of region c, and would have given a compact and brilliant coal, having very likely before petrifaction reached the same degree of carbonization as the latter.

Still, if we limit ourselves to a comparison of the same carbonized wood, preserved on the one hand by petrifaction, and on the other hand non-mineralized, we find a very perceptible diminution in bulk.

But this main fact makes intelligible all the phenomena of petrifaction and retrogression.

It is in this way that petrifaction succeeds progress.

How long such a state of complete petrifaction, when once reached, will continue, seems to depend upon external causes, for the iron bonds of the social environment which grows up repress disintegrating forces as well as improvement.

Without the first there would have been the petrifaction and slow decay of the Eastern Empire, where church and state were closely married and loss of external power brought no relief of internal tyranny.

The Westminster Confession of Faith may be taken as the dogmatic petrifaction of the notion which lies, more or less undeveloped and still living, in the other Protestant Confessions.

When at last they went to him they found him convulsed and rigid, like a petrifaction of grief; although he walked about, heard and saw, and covered his wounded and dying father with kisses.

You will probably go mad within a reasonable time,or, if you are a man, run off and die with your head on a curb-stone, in Melbourne or San Francisco,or, if you are a woman, quarrel and break your heart, or turn into a pale, jointed petrifaction that moves about as if it were alive, or play some real life-tragedy or other.

So peaceful and motionless she lay that she might have been some petrifaction of a past age now first exhumed and laid bare to the cold light of the stars.

petrification 1 occurrences

The delicate point is this, that the petrification or at least the process of stiffening that has attacked the whole spiritual life of Islâm since about 1000 A.D. makes its accommodation to the requirements of modern intercourse a most difficult problem.

Do we say   petrifaction   or  petrification