# fossil

Pronunciation: US say "FAH-suhl" /ˈfɑsl̩/; UK say "FOS-uhl" /ˈfɒsl̩/

## Noun

1. The mineralized remains of an animal or plant, preserved in rock over a long span of time.
   - Simple: The hardened remains of an animal or plant, kept in rock from long ago.
   - _The museum displayed a fossil of an ancient fish._
   - _They uncovered fossils scattered across the dry riverbed._
2. Any preserved evidence of ancient life, including shells, imprints, burrows, droppings, and chemicals produced by living things.
   - Simple: Any sign of ancient life kept in rock, such as shells, prints, or burrows.
   - _A preserved burrow counts as a fossil even when no bones survive._
   - _Chemical fossils can record life that left behind no visible body._
3. Anything seen as extremely old, no longer in use, or badly out of date.
   - Simple: Something so old or out of date that it seems to belong to the past.
   - _Her flip phone is a fossil next to everyone else's smartphones._
   - _Critics dismissed the policy as a fossil from a bygone era._
4. An elderly person regarded as hopelessly old-fashioned or behind the times.
   - Simple: An old person seen as too set in old-fashioned ways.
   - _He grumbled that management was run by a bunch of fossils._
   - _To the interns, the senior partner was just a fossil set in his ways._
5. A word that survives in modern use only as part of a fixed expression, no longer appearing on its own.
   - Simple: A word that survives only inside one fixed phrase and is never used on its own.
   - _'Kith' is a fossil, appearing today only in the phrase 'kith and kin.'_
   - _Several fossils linger in English, trapped inside idioms no one analyzes anymore._

## Origin

From French fossile, from Latin fossilis ("something which has been dug up"), from fodio ("I dig up").

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/fossil (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).