the.com/ossification
When cartilage grows up, stops dreaming, and becomes bone.
means The process of turning to bone — literally when cartilage hardens into skeleton, or figuratively when ideas, habits, or institutions harden into something rigid and unchangeable.
from From Latin os ('bone') fused with facere ('to make'), giving ossificare — 'to make into bone.' French surgeons and anatomists picked up ossification in the 1700s for the literal biological process, and it wasn't long before writers borrowed the word for anything that had gone stiff with age: traditions, bureaucracies, minds.
- starts in
- womb, around week 7
- finishes
- mid-20s, skull last of all
- metaphor use
- ideas that refuse to bend anymore
- wrong turn
- heterotopic ossification grows bone in muscle