WordWeb Online

1. Paralyzing with terror
   "Organic remains have exercised an influence upon their mode of petrifying"

1. Cause to become stonelike, stiff or dazed and stunned
   "The horror petrified his feelings"; "Fear petrified her thinking"
    
2. Change into stone
   "the wood petrified with time";
   - lapidify
    
3. Make rigid and set into a conventional pattern
   "slogans petrify our thinking";
   - rigidify, ossify

See also: alarming

Type of: blunt, deaden, fossilise [Brit], fossilize, stiffen

Encyclopedia: Petrify