transmogrify
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of transmogrify
1650–60; earlier also transmigrify, transmography; apparently a pseudo-Latinism with transfigure or transmigrate + -ify
Explanation
You've seen something transmogrify, or transform completely, if you've ever watched the process of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. Use the verb transmogrify when a person or thing changes in a way that surprises you. A fairy tale frog transmogrifies into a prince in one well-known story, and a tomboy might be said to transmogrify when she puts on a frilly dress to be a flower girl in a wedding. The origin of transmogrify isn't clear, although one theory is that it was a mistake made long ago, when someone meant to say transmigrate, or "pass into another body after death."
Vocabulary lists containing transmogrify
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Grendel
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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:
Evolution has similarly purloined existing features and modified them, using great thrift, for example, to transmogrify a piece of jaw into an ear or to transform a leg into a wing.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 26, 2025
It’s likely in the middle of that process now, and could transmogrify itself into a star in as little as 200,000 years.
From Scientific American ● Apr. 24, 2023
Which leaves open the question of whether New York state prosecutors can transmogrify this conduct into a state crime.
From Washington Post ● Apr. 4, 2023
At 66 I haven’t got a lot of time left before I transmogrify into a maguey.
From New York Times ● Sep. 2, 2021
S. S. Schmucker's ambition was to transmogrify the Lutheran Church into an essentially unionistic Reformed body.
From American Lutheranism Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod by F. (Friedrich) Bente
Consequently, construction delays mounted, all transmogrified into change orders.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 20, 2026
The air around me was sour and stale, transmogrified by a mass of sweating bodies.
From Salon ● Aug. 17, 2024
Like other climate denial claims, the urban planning concept transmogrified in the depths of the internet.
From Scientific American ● Jul. 19, 2023
What Churchill “has come to represent,” they say, “has transmogrified into a deeper, more troubling and darker phenomenon in which the past weighs unforgivingly on the present.”
From New York Times ● Oct. 13, 2020
Fragments of food are transmogrified into cellular machinery.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
According to cast member Kyle Sullivan, “There was this weird dynamic where they were taking something that exists in an adult context, like ‘Fear Factor,’ and transmogrifying it for kids.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 13, 2024
With his endpaper paintings, Bradford demonstrated a talent for transmogrifying everyday objects by layering, sanding, gouging, scraping and tearing until they obliquely reflected his peculiar perspective on the world.
From New York Times ● Apr. 19, 2023
One of its greatest delights is King’s extended cameo as an unlucky hillbilly transmogrifying into a mossy mutant, an appropriate metaphor for his fecund imagination.
From The Guardian ● Aug. 22, 2019
Guitar Hero reanimated the music video game genre when it launched in 2005, magically transmogrifying players into bona fide fret-shredding, tremolo-slapping Rock Gods.
From Time ● Aug. 23, 2016
Verbosity.—This is the power of writing two columns in answer to a three-line paragraph—of twisting, turning, transmogrifying, dissecting, kicking, cuffing, illustrating, turning inside out, and outside in again the aforesaid paragraph.
From Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 32, November 5, 1870 by Various
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
