transmute
Americanverb (used with or without object)
verb
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to change the form, character, or substance of
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to alter (an element, metal, etc) by alchemy
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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transmutabilitynoun
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transmutablenessnoun
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transmuternoun
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untransmutabilitynoun
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untransmutablenessnoun
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transmutableadjective
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untransmutableadjective
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untransmutedadjective
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transmutablyadverb
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untransmutablyadverb
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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transmutesimple
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transmutessimple
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have transmutedperfect
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has transmutedperfect
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am transmutingprogressive
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are transmutingprogressive
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is transmutingprogressive
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have been transmutingperfect progressive
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has been transmutingperfect progressive
Past
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transmutedsimple
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had transmutedperfect
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was transmutingprogressive
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were transmutingprogressive
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had been transmutingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of transmute
1400–50; late Middle English < Latin trānsmūtāre to shift, equivalent to trāns- trans- + mūtāre to change.
Explanation
Transmute is a verb meaning to change in appearance or form. For example, magical creatures can transmute into other beings. When you're fighting a wizard, don’t be surprised if he transmutes into a terrifying dragon. More realistically, you, too, can transmute your appearance — by dying your hair, piercing your nose, or changing your style of dress. Transmute often describes physical change — like when alchemists tried to transmute lead into gold — but it can also be used more figuratively to describe anything that's transformed. For example, you might transmute your sketchy memories of growing up in Boston into the Great American Novel.
Vocabulary lists containing transmute
American Gods
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The Good Earth
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The Left Hand of Darkness
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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:
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.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 8, 2026
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 ● Dec. 21, 2025
"What causes something to be insulating, conducting or magnetic? Can we transmute something into a different state?"
From Science Daily ● Nov. 17, 2025
According to Israel's Basic Law, the president "has the power to pardon criminals and reduce or transmute their sentence".
From BBC ● Nov. 12, 2025
It was his odd blindness, I think, to all problems of a personal nature which made him able at the end to transmute even Bunny’s highly substantive troubles into spiritual ones.
From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt
According to Slant magazine, the writer-director’s flair for “go-for-broke zaniness transmutes what might otherwise have been a lump of self-indulgent cliches into gold.”
From Washington Post ● Feb. 23, 2022
Finally, she transmutes into a virus — a female bug in a hardwired social system.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 10, 2021
Like a sleazy alchemist, Hill transmutes shoestring budgets into cinematic gold, melting down and reshaping scrap metal into distinctive, often beautiful art.
From The Guardian ● Sep. 16, 2020
In a way it transmutes our very real and ongoing anxiety and sense of helplessness into something we can put eyes on, a vicarious and safely distant fantasy of disorder and detonation.
From Salon ● May 4, 2020
There is the primary creative power, which, strong in love and passion and imagination, converses with nature, draws thence its heaped intellectual wealth, and transmutes it all into poetical substance.
From Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 353, March 1845 by Various
“Another Dimension” is his answer to the years of rejection, pain and incandescent ire, but transmuted into a vibrant, avant-garde, genre-defying gaping wound found within 11 tight tracks.
From Salon ● Jun. 5, 2026
In Heaney’s poetry the personal is always transmuted by a larger vision.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 21, 2025
Even our inherited classical mythology can be transmuted.
From New York Times ● Apr. 5, 2023
The poles of good coffee — acidity and sweetness — are transmuted, but both are still enjoyable in this cup, even if the flavor can dissipate quickly.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 23, 2023
The lights inside the limo transmuted from orange, to red, and back to purple.
From "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman
The idea of transmuting black rock into useful products was born out of similar energy-security anxieties a century ago.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 30, 2026
The event will feature a Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice for transmuting suffering, she says, during which participants visualize the suffering, breathing it in, then breathe out compassion and healing.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 15, 2025
In the process of transmuting the mid-rib of the leaf, the plant undergoes a proliferation of new vascular tissue — and avoids rotting while the rest of the leaf withers away.
From New York Times ● Feb. 25, 2024
What Soddy and Rutherford realized was that nature itself is an alchemist, "transmuting" materials into other types of materials through the spontaneous process of radioactive decay.
From Salon ● Aug. 12, 2023
For the alchemists, including Boyle and Newton, the fundamental enterprise was one of transmuting one substance into another.
From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton
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.
