petrified
If you've ever felt so terrified you couldn't move, you've been petrified. Someone who's petrified of public speaking will do anything they possibly can to avoid giving a speech.
Petrified is from the French pétrifier, "change into stone," and the Latin root petra, "rock or crag." Its earliest definition was "converted into a stony substance," and this literal meaning describes certain rocky fossils that developed from softer organic matter, like wood. The figurative use, for a person who's so scared it seems like they're made of stone, is attributed from the 18th century.
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struck with fear and unable to move
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(of organic matter) turned to stone or a stonelike substance
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Vocabulary lists containing petrified
In this novel, a boy with facial anomalies tries to navigate the sometimes treacherous world of public school.
The author invites the young reader into the grueling experience of training for and running the Alaskan Iditarod dogsled race. It is a study in preparation, training, perseverance, learning from hardship and failure, teamwork, commitment, humility, and how to finish.
With a virus shutting down most of his world aboveground, young Clay O'Brian decides to play in the woods, where he meets an elf-hound that belongs to the People Under the Mountain and an owl-head boy who lives in a hidden village.