Petrified is fear that stops your body working. You hear a noise on the stairs at two in the morning and you lie there without moving a finger — that is petrified.
It is stronger than scared and stronger than frightened: a petrified person cannot run, cannot shout, cannot decide anything. You are petrified OF something — petrified of dogs, petrified of flying — or petrified that something is about to happen. The other meaning has nothing to do with fear and is completely literal: petrified wood is wood that lay buried for millions of years while minerals took the place of every fibre, so the log comes out as stone with the rings still showing. The verb is petrify, and it works both ways — the sound petrified her, the forest was petrified. Save petrified for the real thing; for mild nerves, use nervous.
1adjectivepetrifiedSo frightened that you cannot move or think.~13%
“She stood petrified at the top of the ladder.”
synonyms: horrified, paralysed
2adjectiveturnedTurned to stone over a very long time, with minerals in place of the original material.~87%
“The museum has a slab of petrified wood you are allowed to touch.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 8 sentences found in the wild and placed 8 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: terrified
Ancient Greek
πέτρα — rock
Latin
petra — rock
Medieval Latin
petrificāre
Middle French
pétrifier
English
petrify
English, today
petrified
Built from
petrify comes from Middle French pétrifier, from Medieval Latin petrificāre, from Latin petra (“rock”), from Ancient Greek πέτρα (“rock”) + -ficāre, from facere (“do, make”), equivalent to petro + ify.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA