Princeton's WordNet(4.00 / 6 votes)Rate this definition:

1. dodo, fogy, fogey, fossil(noun)

   someone whose style is out of fashion

2. fossil(adj)

   the remains (or an impression) of a plant or animal that existed in a past geological age and that has been excavated from the soil

3. fossil(adj)

   characteristic of a fossil

GCIDE(4.00 / 4 votes)Rate this definition:

1. Fossil(a.)

   preserved from a previous geological age; as, fossil water from deep wells; -- usually implying that the object so described has had its substance modified by long residence in the ground, but also used (as with fossil water) in cases where chemical composition is not altered.

Origin: [L. fossilis, fr. fodere to dig: cf. F. fossile. See Fosse.]

Wiktionary(5.00 / 1 vote)Rate this definition:

1. fossil(Noun)

   The mineralized remains of an animal or plant.

2. fossil(Noun)

   Any preserved evidence of ancient life, including shells, imprints, burrows, coprolites, and organically-produced chemicals.

3. fossil(Noun)

   A fossilized term.

4. fossil(Noun)

   Anything extremely old, extinct, or outdated.

Webster Dictionary(5.00 / 1 vote)Rate this definition:

1. Fossil(adj)

   dug out of the earth; as, fossil coal; fossil salt

2. Fossil(adj)

   like or pertaining to fossils; contained in rocks, whether petrified or not; as, fossil plants, shells

3. Fossil(noun)

   a substance dug from the earth

4. Fossil(noun)

   the remains of an animal or plant found in stratified rocks. Most fossils belong to extinct species, but many of the later ones belong to species still living

5. Fossil(noun)

   a person whose views and opinions are extremely antiquated; one whose sympathies are with a former time rather than with the present

Origin: [L. fossilis, fr. fodere to dig: cf. F. fossile. See Fosse.]

Freebase(3.00 / 2 votes)Rate this definition:

1. Fossil

   Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous rock formations and sedimentary layers is known as the fossil record. The study of fossils across geological time, how they were formed, and the evolutionary relationships between taxa are some of the most important functions of the science of paleontology. Such a preserved specimen is called a "fossil" if it is older than some minimum age, most often the arbitrary date of 10,000 years. Hence, fossils range in age from the youngest at the start of the Holocene Epoch to the oldest from the Archaean Eon, up to 3.4 billion years old. The observation that certain fossils were associated with certain rock strata led early geologists to recognize a geological timescale in the 19th century. The development of radiometric dating techniques in the early 20th century allowed geologists to determine the numerical or "absolute" age of the various strata and thereby the included fossils.

Chambers 20th Century Dictionary(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition:

1. Fossil

   fos′il, n. the petrified remains of an animal or vegetable found embedded in the strata of the earth's crust: anything antiquated.—adj. dug out of the earth: in the condition of a fossil: antiquated.—adj. Fossilif′erous, bearing or containing fossils.—n. Fossilificā′tion, the act of becoming fossil.—vs.t. Fossil′ify, Foss′ilīse, to convert into a fossil.—v.i. to be changed into a stony or fossil state.—ns. Fossilisā′tion, a changing into a fossil; Foss′ilism, the science of fossils; Foss′ilist, one skilled in fossils; Fossilol′ogy, Fossil′ogy, paleontology. [Fr. fossile—L. fossilis—fodĕre, to dig.]

The New Hacker's Dictionary(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition:

1. fossil

   1. In software, a misfeature that becomes understandable only in historical context, as a remnant of times past retained so as not to break compatibility. Example: the retention of octal as default base for string escapes in C, in spite of the better match of hexadecimal to ASCII and modern byte-addressable architectures. See dusty deck. 2. More restrictively, a feature with past but no present utility. Example: the force-all-caps (LCASE) bits in the V7 and BSD Unix tty driver, designed for use with monocase terminals. (In a perversion of the usual backward-compatibility goal, this functionality has actually been expanded and renamed in some later USG Unix releases as the IUCLC and OLCUC bits.)

British National Corpus

1. Nouns Frequency

   Rank popularity for the word 'fossil' in Nouns Frequency: #2390

Numerology

1. Chaldean Numerology

   The numerical value of fossil in Chaldean Numerology is: 7

2. Pythagorean Numerology

   The numerical value of fossil in Pythagorean Numerology is: 8

Sample Sentences & Example Usage

1. Scott Pruitt:

   The war on coal is over; the war on fossil fuels is over.

2. Janet Waddington:

   When she showed me this fossil, I just about fell on the floor, it was so amazing.

3. Saker Nusseibeh:

   We are underweight fossil fuels, we are underweight on companies with a high carbon footprint.

4. Paleontologist Ashley Leger:

   It's an absolute dream come true for me, it's the one fossil you always want to find in your career.

5. Ian Crawford:

   It's a fossil fuel reserve. Like mining all the coal or mining all the oil, once you've mined it … it's gone.

Images & Illustrations of fossil