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vitrification

UK /ˈvɪ.tɹɪ.fɪˌkeɪ.ʃən/noun

vitrification is a noun meaning “Turning to glass or glasslike material: the action or process of vitrifying a material: conversion into an amorphous solid free of any crystalline…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled V-I-T-R-I-F-I-C-A-T-I-O-N and has 5 syllables, and it appears about once in every 13 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of vitrification is vitrifications.

What does vitrification mean?

noun

  1. 1

    Turning to glass or glasslike material: the action or process of vitrifying a material: conversion into an amorphous solid free of any crystalline structure by addition or removal of heat or by mixture with an additive.

  2. 2

    An instance of such conversion.

  3. 3

    The result of such conversion: a vitrified substance or object.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How do you pronounce vitrification?

  • UK /ˈvɪ.tɹɪ.fɪˌkeɪ.ʃən/

Vitrification has 5 syllables (counted from the pronunciation).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Forms of vitrification

  • vitrifications plural
  • vitrifaction

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

How common is vitrification?

Vitrification appears about once in every 13 million words in written English, the 110,368th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

Vitrification in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense turning to glass:

LanguageWords
Frenchvitrification
Portuguesevitrificação

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does vitrification come from?

From Late Latin *vitrificātio (“glassification”), from *vitrificāre (“to glassify”), from vitrum (“glass”) + -ificāre (“-ify”). Cf. French vitrification, Spanish vitrificación, Italian vitrificazione.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).