vitrify

Meanings

1. 1
   verb

   to convert a material into glass or a glasslike substance by heat and fusion, or to undergo that change

   A lightning strike can vitrify quartz-rich sand into a glassy tube.

2. 2
   verb

   to preserve cells, tissue, or another material by cooling it rapidly into a glasslike solid without forming damaging ice crystals

   The clinic can vitrify unfertilized eggs for long-term storage.

Borrowed from Middle French vitrifier, from Latin vitrum, 'glass,' plus a verb-forming element meaning 'make.' The original process used heat to create glass; cryobiology later adopted vitrify for rapid cooling into a noncrystalline, glasslike solid.

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