lapidification

English edit

Etymology edit

Noun edit

lapidification (countable and uncountable, plural lapidifications)

The act or process of lapidifying; fossilization; petrifaction
- 1969, Georges Perec, translated by Gilbert Adair, A Void:
  For anybody, though, not part of it all (which was obviously Ishmail's plight), that world was nothing but a smooth, cyclical continuum, without a fold in it, without any form of articulation, as compact as stucco or staff, as putty or portland; an imbrication of nights without adjoining days, a total lapidification, a flat, hard, constant, monotonous uniformity in which all things, big or small, smooth or lumpish, living or not, form a solitary, global unit.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “lapidification”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)