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 spider’s ability to transmute our human apprehensions still holds true.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 15, 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
If you cut an atom, you transmute the elements.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
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
Phoebe Bridgers, the indie-music breakout of 2020, transmutes her personal angst into downbeat songs accentuated by the self-consciously intimate stream of depression posts on her public Instagram account.
From New York Times ● Jan. 19, 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
The same principle governs the application of suitable nourishment to all forms of life—the recipient retains its own personal characteristics, but transmutes the food into the power to intensify, enlarge, and develop those personal characteristics.
From The Lure of the Pen A book for Would-Be Authors by Klickmann, Flora
“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
This event has been transmuted into “The Gold,” an involving British drama premiering here Sunday on PBS.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 5, 2025
They’re not the products of someone who has digested and transmuted her experience of those older artists into an original idiom, one that generates its own internal heat rather than depending on a borrowed glow.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 27, 2023
They had transmuted carbon into radioactive nitro gen.
From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik
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 collection showcased an intricate blend of masculine and feminine, transmuting the high-end tailoring traditions of British menswear with haute couture fabrications, harking back to Dior’s womenswear roots.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 23, 2023
The musical, even at this somewhat wobbly preliminary stage, holds onto the gold of Hinton’s novel, transmuting it imperfectly yet courageously into hypnotic theater.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 7, 2023
She saps the event's power to define her, transmuting pain into affecting prose.
From Salon ● Apr. 20, 2021
But, nevertheless, they have one common enterprise, that of transmuting signs and symptoms into knowledge.
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.
