Dictionary

carnification en · NOUN

Pronunciation

• /ˌkɑɹnɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/ (General-American)
• /ˌkɑːnɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/ (Received-Pronunciation)

Etymology

Compare French carnification.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) A pathological process in which chronic inflammation or infection causes lung tissue to organize into a fibrous form that resembles meat, which can lead to a loss of normal lung function.
   • The physical signs of carnification of the lower lobe of a lung and those of a small pleural effusion are the same, excepting that the chest may be distended on one side, and the heart be displaced away from the disease in some cases of local pleural effusion. 1898, Thomas Clifford Allbutt, A System of Medicine - Volume 5, page 368:
   • Carnification is held to be most common in new-born children; after the fifth year it is comparatively unfrequent in occurrence; whilst in adults it is very rarely met with; but in aged people again becomes more common , though still less so than in early life. 1853, The British and Foreign Medico-chirurgical Review, page 529:
   • The lesions alluded to are those which have been hitherto described under the names of lobular pneumonia and carnification. 1858, J. Forsyth Meigs, A Practical Treatise of the Diseases of Children, page 129:
   • Fig. 3.31: Chronic organizing pneumonia ("carnification" ) . 2013, Gerhard R F Krueger, L Maximilian Buja, Atlas of Anatomic Pathology with Imaging, page 130:
2. (countable, uncountable) A similar pathological transformation to other types of tissue so that it becomes fibrous and dense.
   • One grade of inflammatory irritation produces carnification or hepatization of the medullary tissue, another grade suppuration, and a still higher degree of inflammatory irritation produces gangrene of that tissue. 1866, Edward Swift Dunster, James Bradbridge Hunter, Charles Eucharist de Medicis Sajous, International Record of Medicine and General Practice Clinics, page 440:
   • Salt-secretion, water-storage, high osmotic pressure as well as branch and leaf carnification and shrinkage and other plants are very commonly distributed 2003, Xiaoling Pan, Ecosystems Dynamics, Ecosystem-society Interactions, and Remote Sensing Applications for Semi-arid and Arid Land, page 51:
   • Its deficiency causes sterility in males and carnification of vaginal epithelium in females. 2013, Venkataraman, Diagnostic Oral Medicine with the Point Access Scratch Code, page 750:
   • The liver was not cirrhosed, as he had believed, but was in a state of carnification. 1873, Dr. Eames, “Carnification of the Liver--Peritonitis”, in The Dublin Journal of Medical Science, volume 56, page 64:
   • From this condition the marrow may return to its normal state, or the carnification may be the stage prior to and immediately preceding suppuration. 1887, Thomas Jones, Diseases of the bones, page 72:
3. (countable, uncountable) The literal transformation of something into flesh or meat.
   • Brooks Bouson also remarks on the fact that Year also draws much of its abject horror from its vision of the male "''carnification" of the female subject: that is, the reduction of the woman to a fleshly object or to meat or to a rotting corpse' (p. 13). 2020, Susan Watkins, Contemporary Women’s Post-Apocalyptic Fiction, page 70:
   • The room AX is pacing in looks CUTE ('cut!' with an 'e' which, in turn, stands for eye; an eye of carnification that turns bread into flesh; good enough to eat once the carnifex has made the split into a shift, which is not the end of it; an eye of mastication, obviously of great value – canine, yet kingly – carpe diem to the appetite, never mind the digestion as long as one can chew sight to a pulp, swallow, and feel all the better for it; […] 2010, Neil Baker, G Day: Please God, Get Me Off the Hook, page 111:
   • Stranger yet, at the point where the wood met the man's flesh, there was a type of carnification taking place in which it looked like the material was a mix of half-wood half-flesh. 2021, Un-su Kim, The Cabinet:
4. (countable, uncountable) The transformation of something into a human being.
   • Alongside these radiant, clamorous sisters with their luminous eyes and rich curves, Hennie appeared – and was– frail, muted, secretive, nothing at all like an expected carnfication of his full name, Hendrik. 1981, Hal Porter, “Hennie Silvester”, in The Clairvoyant Goat and Other Stories, page 9:
   • Bulgakov does not see this divine-human communication as being 'asymmetrical', such that while the human is divinized, the divine is unaffected by the human, which, a traditional opinion says, would only result in its 'carnification' . 2016, Brandon Gallaher, Freedom and Necessity in Modern Trinitarian Theology:
   • Gerald was a Thor. Of course, you are not to take that literally; but if ever there was a carnification of the great god himself, then Gerald was in his image. 2022, Fannie Hurst, The Vertical City:
5. (countable, uncountable) The process of something nonphysical taking on a physical form (not necessarily involving flesh).
   • Ptah-Seth and Sekmet whirl in utter disorientation, dizzy with the loss of time and reality, utterly confused and shattered by the destruction of their first carnification and the change to another form. 2008, John Jones, Guardian of Forever, page 141:
   • But life is lived in such a way that this carnification of implicit ghosts occurs most commonly in joking. 2017, William Fry, Sweet Madness: A Study of Humor:
6. (countable, uncountable) Carnal (sexual) activity.
   • Yet the spaces between the photos are not so unfleshly: sanguinary parturition, placid blood-warmth of lactation, mysterious lone carnification of my and my husband's love in this marriage-bed– all even more inviolable for being so privately, so unimmortally mine 2003, William Radice, Poetry and Community: Lectures and Essays, 1991-2001, page 88:
   • There will be no carnification in this house! 2020, Kevin Karmalade, Hail Regina - Season One (Episodes 1-8)::

Forms

Relateds

carnify