This is also why the Roman Catholic Pope claims to be the sole successor to Saint Peter. Jesus' disciple bore this Greek name, which is why Jesus claimed that Peter would be the rock upon which His church would be built. Greek also had a masculine noun, pétros 'rock, stone', which served as a man's name, Peter.

Latin apparently borrowed petra from Greek pétra. Facere goes back to PIE root dhe-/dho 'to set, put', an origin it shares with English do and German tun. Word History: Today's Good Word was borrowed from Middle French pétrifier 'to make or become stone', a verb based on the Latin noun petra 'rock, crag' + -ficare, the combining form of facere 'to make, do'. In Play: The basic meaning of today's word is 'to turn into stone': 'The Petrified Forest National Park features entire tree trunks that have been petrified over the ages.' However, it is metaphorically used to indicate extreme fear: 'The first time I went through a car wash inside the car, I was petrified.' Petrescent 'becoming stone' is a first cousin. Anything that may be petrified is petrifiable. Rarer adjectives are petrifactive 'causing petrifaction'. We may also use the participles as adjectives: petrifying and petrified. The action noun is petrification and the personal noun is petrifier. Notes: Today's verb comes with a large extended family. (Transitive) Change into stone or make hard, or (intransitive) to become stone or hard. This encased the logs, shielding them from oxygen and allowing the petrification process to occur.Meaning: 1. Once that lava touched the lake water, it hardened into pillow basalt (an igneous rock, which is formed by the cooling of molten magma or lava). Near the present-day city of Vantage, elms, sycamores, conifers, and ginkgoes would periodically die and then sink to the bottom of local lakes. Around 15 million years ago, volcanic eruptions sent molten lava flowing across central Washington. Up in the Pacific Northwest, there's a much younger petrified forest with a more dramatic origin story.

Scores of these plants were then buried rapidly in sediment and silica-rich volcanic ash. Log jams were often created when deceased trees fell into the prehistoric rivers that ran across the landscape. Two hundred and twenty-five million years ago, it was the site of a dense forest loaded with conifers and about a dozen other tree species. Petrified Forest National Park is about an hour's drive away from Winslow. Within the United States, there's an especially-famous motherload in eastern Arizona. The end result is a rock that appropriates the shape and structure of our original tree.Ĭaches of petrified wood can be found all over the world, from New Zealand to Greece to Argentina. Over a period of a few million years, those minerals will crystalize. As our plant's internal structure gradually breaks down, its organic material (wood fibers) gets replaced by silica and other minerals. Meanwhile, mineral-laden water or mud seeps into the dead tree's pores and other openings. Because oxygen is the main driving force behind the decaying process, the smothered plant will begin to decompose far more slowly than it normally would. This blanketing material then shields the dead tree from oxygen. Once in a while, though, a newly-deceased tree (or some other kind of woody plant) gets rapidly buried by mud, silt or volcanic ash. Usually, a dead, fallen tree will be subjected to this process. The process that most people call ' rotting' is a type of decay which sets in as microorganisms break down organic matter. When an organism dies, it usually decomposes. How is such a transformation possible? Well, it can only take place under the right set of circumstances.

Petrify crossword