ossify

Other forms of ossify

past tense or participle

ossified

present participle

ossifying·

third person

ossifies·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about ossify

What does ossify mean?

ossify means "become bony". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in ossify?

ossify has 3 syllables: os-si-fy. The stress falls on "os". In IPA it is /ˈɑsəˌfaɪ/.

What is another word for ossify?

Close synonyms include rigidify, petrify. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is ossify a common word?

ossify is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with ossify?

72 words rhyme with ossify. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.