the.com/petrified
so scared you've gone full statue, or so old you've gone full rock.
means Either so frightened that you can't move, or literally turned to stone (especially organic matter like wood that has fossilized into rock over time).
from From Latin 'petra,' meaning rock or stone — itself borrowed from Greek 'petra,' the same root that gives us 'petroleum' (rock-oil) and the name Peter ('the rock'). Add the suffix '-fy' (to make), and you get 'to make into stone.' The geological sense came first; the 'frozen with fear' sense is a vivid metaphor — terror locking your muscles as rigid as fossilized wood.
- latin root
- petra means rock, the stone-cold origin
- fossil wood
- minerals replace wood cell by cell, leaving stone
- double meaning
- both terrified and turned to actual stone
- arizona forest
- whole national park of 225-million-year-old stone logs
- medusa's gift
- her gaze petrified victims in classical myth
petrified forest national park — 225 million year old fossilized trees in arizona spanning 93,533 acres
kuri basin petrified forest — 32 million year old fossilized trees in kazakhstan near the caspian sea