metamorphose

/ˈmɛdəˌmɔrˈfoʊz/

Other forms: metamorphosed; metamorphosing

If you've ever seen a caterpillar emerge from its cocoon transformed into a butterfly, you've watched it metamorphose, or change completely.

Use the verb metamorphose to describe a total transformation, like an egg into a bird or a seed into a tomato plant. When someone or something changes in appearance, they also metamorphose, the way a messy kid does when he tucks in his shirt and combs his hair. The origins of the word metamorphose lie in the Greek meta, or "change," and morphe, "form."

Definitions of metamorphose

1. verb

   change in outward structure or looks
   “The salesman metamorphosed into an ugly beetle”

   synonyms: transform, transmute

   types:

   aurify

   transform into gold

   become, turn

   undergo a change or development

   boil down, come down, reduce

   be the essential element

   choke, suffocate

   become stultified, suppressed, or stifled

   nucleate

   form into a nucleus

   add up, amount, come

   develop into

   type of:

   change

   undergo a change; become different in essence; losing one's or its original nature
2. verb

   change completely the nature or appearance of
   synonyms: transfigure, transmogrify

   type of:

   change by reversal, reverse, turn

   change to the contrary