mutate
Americanverb (used with object)
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mutates,
present (3rd person singular)
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mutated,
past participle, past
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mutating
present participle
-
to change; alter.
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Biology. to cause (a gene, cell, etc.) to undergo an alteration of one or more characteristics.
The disease mutates the retina’s rod cells, and they slowly stop working.
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Phonetics. to change by umlaut.
verb (used without object)
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mutates,
present (3rd person singular)
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mutated,
past participle, past
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mutating
present participle
-
to undergo change.
It was a gamble to mutate from hard rock frontman to big band crooner, but he went seriously retro and won that bet in a huge way.
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Biology. (of a gene, cell, etc.) to undergo an alteration of one or more characteristics.
Drug-resistant cells mutate more quickly and could migrate into surrounding tissue.
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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mutatesimple
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mutatessimple
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have mutatedperfect
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has mutatedperfect
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am mutatingprogressive
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are mutatingprogressive
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is mutatingprogressive
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have been mutatingperfect progressive
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has been mutatingperfect progressive
Past
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mutatedsimple
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had mutatedperfect
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was mutatingprogressive
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were mutatingprogressive
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had been mutatingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of mutate
First recorded in 1810–20; from Latin mūtātus, past participle of mūtare “to change”; see -ate 1
Explanation
To mutate is to change, especially genetically. When plants mutate, their genes change in a way that makes them look, grow, or reproduce differently. The word mutate comes up most often in biology, to describe the natural — or artificial — process of genetic change. If a scientist alters an animal’s DNA, for example, it mutates. Another way that scientists mutate organisms is in food production: often the genes in a plant are changed in a way that helps it resist insects or weeds, or makes it grow much larger than normal. The Latin root word of mutate is mutare, which simply means "to change."
Vocabulary lists containing mutate
Anything But Typical
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The Hot Zone
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Turtles All the Way Down
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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.
See Examples For:
When hypergolic propellants burn, they release highly carcinogenic toxins and can cause suffocation and mutate a person’s DNA.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 19, 2026
Genes can be expressed or activated, or not—more often they’re not; they mutate and can alter their own function and be altered by environmental forces.
From Slate ● Mar. 19, 2026
Most efforts to create broader vaccines have aimed to protect against an entire viral family, such as all coronaviruses or all influenza strains, by targeting viral components that mutate less frequently.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 23, 2026
The songs constantly mutate, often stretching out over five minutes, in an implicit rejection of TikTok virality.
From BBC ● Oct. 15, 2025
The Ebola Reston vims jumped quickly from room to room, and as it blossomed in the monkeys, it seemed to mutate spontaneously into something that looked quite a lot like influenza.
From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
“It’s a virus that mutates and against which people must be immunized over and over again.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 8, 2026
Most of the time the virus drifts along making minor changes and then every so often there is a sudden abrupt shift as the virus mutates substantially.
From BBC ● Nov. 8, 2025
Bird flu has already cost America billions — and if it mutates to allow for human-to-human transmission, the cost could soar into the hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars.
From Salon ● Oct. 11, 2025
Rasmussen said the worry now is that if H5N1 mutates to become transmissible between people, it’ll be young children as well as the old and compromised who are likely to be most affected.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 19, 2025
The fact that the virus mutates rapidly means that vaccines for it will be very difficult to develop.
From "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston
Delaware Life mutated once Walter took over: Obscure private-credit deals grew to about 45% of its nearly $42 billion debt investments, compared with 9% in 2014, an analysis by The Wall Street Journal found.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 28, 2026
Even the endings feel like save points, with Alice respawning at the start of each consecutive movie with another mutated monkey on her back.
From Salon ● Sep. 23, 2026
A patient’s tumor is surgically removed and then sequenced, allowing researchers to figure out which mutated proteins are expressed on the cancer cells.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 21, 2026
Flu hit early last winter, with a new mutated version of the virus circulating - a seasonal influenza called subclade K or Super-K.
From BBC ● Aug. 31, 2026
Poxies crept toward us, mutated to the point they barely resembled anything human.
From "City of the Plague God" by Sarwat Chadda
But some viruses are adept at changing their appearance – or mutating – so vaccines can quickly go out of date.
From BBC ● Jun. 4, 2026
Stillness that is not still—think Martha Graham by way of Irving Penn, with a nod to Rei Kawakubo’s mutating forms.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 1, 2025
Nearby, Yang Bao’s “Hyperspace,” a gold, mirrored pyramid accompanied by gleaming shards, nestled in a former lavender field, shimmers amid thyme, gingko, California poppies and native grasses, accompanied by haunting, and constantly mutating, music.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 29, 2025
Researchers and public health officials have been putting forth efforts to better understand how bird flu is passed between species to keep it from mutating into something that could become a virus with pandemic potential.
From Salon ● Feb. 2, 2025
Ernie glared back in the mirror, picking at his face, a big pimple in the middle of his forehead like he was mutating into a unicorn.
From "As Brave As You" by Jason Reynolds
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.
