transmute
Americanverb (used with or without object)
verb
-
to change the form, character, or substance of
-
to alter (an element, metal, etc) by alchemy
Other Word Forms
- transmutability noun
- transmutable adjective
- transmutableness noun
- transmutably adverb
- transmuter noun
- untransmutability noun
- untransmutable adjective
- untransmutableness noun
- untransmutably adverb
- untransmuted adjective
Etymology
Origin of transmute
1400–50; late Middle English < Latin trānsmūtāre to shift, equivalent to trāns- trans- + mūtāre to change.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
As a Black woman who grew up in the segregated South, she transmuted the prejudice her community faced into striking scenes of human connection, many of them sketched from memory and some rendered as linocuts.
From Los Angeles Times
The rosary presupposes our boredom, propensity to distraction, and impatience with dull routine and attempts to transmute these failings into the virtues of faith, hope and charity.
Astrologers consult a national zodiac, palm readers ring pagodas, would-be alchemists attempt to transmute mercury into gold and SIM card companies advertise dial-a-diviners.
From Barron's
In Heaney’s poetry the personal is always transmuted by a larger vision.
"What causes something to be insulating, conducting or magnetic? Can we transmute something into a different state?"
From Science Daily
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
