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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"Simon's Saga," Vocabulary from Episode 19
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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:
He would soon transmogrify these mostly dismal experiences into art.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 14, 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
“That a special purpose grand jury cannot issue an indictment does not diminish the criminal nature of its work or somehow transmogrify that criminal investigation into a civil one,” Judge McBurney wrote.
From New York Times ● Oct. 8, 2022
P. S.—Be sure and see that the printer spells my name rightly, and don't transmogrify it into "TREEBOX," as a beast of a Treasury Clerk did the other day.
From Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 by Various
Like other climate denial claims, the urban planning concept transmogrified in the depths of the internet.
From Scientific American ● Jul. 19, 2023
Maybe before you saw the package in Trader Joe's you assumed it might mean cheese on top of bread, or bread stuffed with cheese, or maybe bread that has been somehow transmogrified into cheese.
From Salon ● Feb. 7, 2022
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
But it could "rapidly be transmogrified into an ideological orthodoxy".
From BBC ● May 12, 2020
The civilization he meant to build has transmogrified to a forest thick with traps.
From "Grendel" by John Gardner
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
Not because they’re heating up, but because they are transmogrifying into their gaseous state.
From New York Times ● Nov. 12, 2023
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
“Thank you for speaking, and speaking from your heart,” Cruz said warmly before transmogrifying into his more lawyerly self.
From Slate ● Jul. 21, 2016
Walter and Ralph were not long in transmogrifying their appearance, and had soon the air of two respectable serving-men in a Flemish household.
From St. George for England by Henty, G. A. (George Alfred)
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.
