Definitions for fossil
ˈfɒs əlfos·sil

Princeton's WordNet(3.11 / 9 votes)Rate this definition:

1. dodo, fogy, fogey, fossilnoun

   someone whose style is out of fashion

2. fossiladjective

   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. fossiladjective

   characteristic of a fossil

GCIDE(3.00 / 6 votes)Rate this definition:

1. Fossiladjective

   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.

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

Wiktionary(5.00 / 2 votes)Rate this definition:

1. fossilnoun

   The mineralized remains of an animal or plant.

2. fossilnoun

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

3. fossilnoun

   A fossilized term.

4. fossilnoun

   Anything extremely old, extinct, or outdated.

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

1. Fossiladjective

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

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

2. Fossiladjective

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

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

3. Fossilnoun

   a substance dug from the earth

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

4. Fossilnoun

   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

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

5. Fossilnoun

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

   Etymology: [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.)

Matched Categories

1. • Oldster

British National Corpus

1. Nouns Frequency

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

How to pronounce fossil?

1. Alex

   US English

   David

   US English

   Mark

   US English

   Daniel

   British

   Libby

   British

   Mia

   British

   Karen

   Australian

   Hayley

   Australian

   Natasha

   Australian

   Veena

   Indian

   Priya

   Indian

   Neerja

   Indian

   Zira

   US English

   Oliver

   British

   Wendy

   British

   Fred

   US English

   Tessa

   South African

How to say fossil in sign language?

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

Examples of fossil in a Sentence

1. Rachel Kyte:

   There are still fossil fuel subsidies from G7 countries — that's ridiculous, why we are subsidizing something we know is killing our children, poisoning them and affecting their ability to learn ? That's beyond me.

2. Victor Beccari:

   The Federal Police of Brazil was investigating a fossil trade operation and recovered, in 2013, over 3.000 specimens, fossils in Brazil are protected by law, as they are part of the geological heritage of the country. Therefore, collecting fossils requires permission, and the trade and private collections of fossils are illegal in Brazil.

3. Peter Larson:

   That was the most that any landowner had ever gotten (for a dinosaur fossil in the ground), we shook hands and he (Williams) was pretty excited about seeing it set up in the museum.

4. Transport Minister Elizabeth Borne:

   We have target for carbon neutrality by 2050 and we need a credible trajectory towards that, which includes a ban on the sale of vehicles that consume fossil fuels by 2040.

5. Michael Mann:

   We've undergone transitions like this before, we got off whale oil because something better came along. That was fossil fuels.

Images & Illustrations of fossil

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