Noun

1. The growing together of bones to form a single unit.
2. The stiffening of a joint as the result of such abnormal fusion.
3. An onset of stiffness or inflexibility.

   • 1918: Yet in using the word democracy, one must plead for a distinction, or, better, a reversion, indicated by the curious anchylosis that, at a certain point in their maturity, usually sets in upon words newly put in use to express some august and large spiritual reality. — Albert Jay Nock in the introduction to Forty Years of It by Brand Whitlock