as in exhausted
to deprive of emotional or intellectual vitality
groupthink and peer pressure have so petrified the thinking of the company's top brass that they haven't produced an innovative product in years
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Recent Examples of petrified
The only issue is his mother Laura (Wright), a woman who has lost a child once before and is petrified of a repeat.
—
Lily Ford, HollywoodReporter, 5 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for petrified
Lily Ford, HollywoodReporter, 5 Sep. 2025
See All Example Sentences for petrified
Recent Examples of Synonyms for petrified
Verb
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Montoya Sanchez said the protest was organized internally by the families exhausted by the long detention and conditions that advocates say have included food with worms, constant illness and insufficient medical access.—
Valerie Gonzalez,
Twin Cities,
25 Jan. 2026
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With costs accelerating and incremental fixes exhausted, healthcare is approaching a breaking point.—
Robert Pearl,
Forbes.com,
21 Jan. 2026
Verb
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Regardless, Vance is the current front-runner in the 2028 Republican presidential primary, though early, hypothetical polls are undermined by Vance’s name recognition compared to other prospective candidates.—
Naomi Lim,
The Washington Examiner,
19 Jan. 2026
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The collapse of the Soviet Union undermined the central purpose for the United States’ agricultural diplomacy.—
Peter Simons,
The Conversation,
16 Jan. 2026
Verb
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Even hospital appointments were overwhelming, with bright lights leaving her drained and overstimulated.—
Jordan Greene,
PEOPLE,
13 Jan. 2026
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This vast gulf between us, not just as Americans but as human beings, has drained me of hope.—
Bao Phi,
Time,
13 Jan. 2026
Verb
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Current models of super-Eddington accretion predict that these features should be weakened or absent when growth becomes so extreme.—
Georgina Jedikovska,
Interesting Engineering,
23 Jan. 2026
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Trump took it a step further in December, with an executive order that further weakened state-level guardrails for AI development.—
Tristan Bove,
Fortune,
22 Jan. 2026
Verb
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That approach is especially helpful for dry skin (which lacks oil) and dehydrated skin (which lacks water) alike.—
Christa Joanna Lee,
Allure,
23 Jan. 2026
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Discolored Leaves Leaves that have started to turn brown or yellow may be dehydrated due to moisture loss from heater damage.—
Heather Bien,
The Spruce,
19 Jan. 2026
Verb
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Sereno proposes that the creatures’ carcasses were first desiccated in a drought before suddenly being engulfed by sediment—likely brought on by a flood.—
Andrea Tamayo,
Scientific American,
23 Oct. 2025
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The authors argue that those features, the intact, hyper-flexed skeletons and the absence of the disarticulation expected after ordinary decay, indicate bodies had been desiccated before burial rather than interred as fresh cadavers.—
Kaif Shaikh,
Interesting Engineering,
16 Sep. 2025
Verb
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Set in the Italian opera world of the 1700s, Rice’s novel tells the not-for-the-squeamish story of two male soprano singers who were castrated as boys in order to maintain their high voices.—
David Browne,
Rolling Stone,
12 Nov. 2025
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The book follows two men pursuing opera in 18th-century Italy — one, named Guido, is castrated to preserve his soprano singing voice, and the other, Tonio, is castrated by his brother Carlo in an attempt to control their family line.—
Jason P. Frank,
Vulture,
12 Nov. 2025
Verb
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For the Los Angeles premiere of Marty Supreme, the two wore custom Chrome Hearts looks.—
Ingrid Vasquez,
PEOPLE,
10 Jan. 2026
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Emma Stone wore comfy, but sophisticated silk pants to a Louis Vuitton event in New York.—
Kaitlin Clapinski,
InStyle,
10 Jan. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Petrified.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/petrified. Accessed 26 Jan. 2026.
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