How to Use transmute in a Sentence

transmute

verb
  • The stories of their lives were transmuted into works of fiction.
  • The former criminal had transmuted into a national hero.
  • The same desire to be in front of people transmuted to music.
    Andrew Dansby, Houston Chronicle, 17 Jan. 2018
  • But the idea of transmuting some of those costs into a fee levied by government will prove a hard sell.
    Ryan Fonseca, Los Angeles Times, 31 May 2023
  • But Fuchs has transmuted some of that pain into joy through her music.
    John Adamian, courant.com, 12 May 2018
  • As the data transmutes form and changes hands, its value becomes anybody’s guess.
    Gregory Barber, WIRED, 8 Aug. 2019
  • And depending on the nature of the role, Nilsson could transmute that vocal metal from steel to purest silver.
    Barrymore Laurence Scherer, WSJ, 16 May 2018
  • The ancient alchemists wanted to transmute the elements and turn lead into gold.
    Quanta Magazine, 8 Mar. 2017
  • The divinity which is the science of painting transmutes the painter’s mind into a resemblance of the divine mind.
    Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 18 Oct. 2019
  • The title refers to alchemy’s goal of transmuting base metals into gold.
    Christian Hertzog, San Diego Union-Tribune, 7 Aug. 2023
  • But take a look at the very next sentence: A tendency to blame yourself and feel guilty can transmute into depression.
    Neuroskeptic, Discover Magazine, 3 Aug. 2010
  • In Schafer’s telling, one of Zendaya’s many talents is to transmute fear into compassion.
    Tyler Mitchell, Vogue, 9 May 2019
  • Not at first meant to be shared, these become a sort of game that revives her sex life with Sylvère, and later transmute into an art project in which Chris finally finds her voice.
    Robert Lloyd, latimes.com, 11 May 2017
  • Slowly, painfully, by fits and starts, the heroic narrative of the Arab spring was transmuted into something much darker.
    New York Times, 12 May 2020
  • To the casual drinker, the idea of transmuting religion or social science into cocktails may verge on the absurd.
    Elizabeth G. Dunn, WSJ, 12 July 2018
  • My plan was to use the forms primarily from a traditional mail truck but transmuted it with the character from those hippy vans.
    Will Nevin, OregonLive.com, 16 Apr. 2018
  • On the southern edge of Gaza City the crystalline blue Mediterranean is being transmuted into a vast, bobbing pool of raw sewage, the product of half a million people with nowhere else for their effluent to flow.
    The Economist, 13 July 2017
  • The holy grail of alchemy was the legendary philosopher’s stone, which wasn’t a stone at all but an elusive substance that could isolate the pure essence of a material and transmute it into something else, namely gold.
    Meg Neal, Popular Mechanics, 19 Oct. 2018
  • The other candidates, on the whole, hoped to transmute the lessons about Trump’s character and dishonesty which emerged from the impeachment into material for the campaign trail.
    Amy Davidson Sorkin, The New Yorker, 21 Dec. 2019
  • Then everyone takes an action in turn, transmuting food into stone or cacao into glass jugs.
    Tom Mendelsohn, Ars Technica, 14 July 2018
  • Visualize the negative energy that may be there being transmuted by this light and feel it’s warmth.
    Lisa Stardust, Teen Vogue, 28 May 2019
  • The book transmuted the trauma Vonnegut himself suffered while witnessing the firebombing of Dresden as a prisoner of war in 1945.
    The Economist, 14 Nov. 2019
  • David Cronenberg’s remake of the 1958 classic about a botched experiment that transmutes a man into a monstrous insect.
    Los Angeles Times, 4 Oct. 2019
  • At best, Maxo rapping about real-life trials and tribulations should be cathartic for both him and the crowd, but too often, the concert alchemy proved too delicate to transmute the experience.
    Chris Kelly, Washington Post, 26 Oct. 2019
  • Then, the 19th-century arrival of French Impressionists in the art scene transmuted the dearth of violet in a cultural explosion.
    Stephen MacKnik, Scientific American, 1 Sep. 2021
  • During that time, these unrooted trees transmute into floating reefs, drifting habitat for a wide range of marine species, including the wingless ocean strider, the only insect known to live in the open ocean.
    Brian Payton, Smithsonian, 9 Feb. 2018
  • The old hydrology was reasserting itself, the lake bottom transmuted back into a lake.
    Brooke Jarvis, New York Times, 31 May 2023
  • Much as medieval alchemists sought to transmute base metals into gold, Biver was now going to turn gold into a material more rugged, robust and hard-wearing than steel.
    Nick Foulkes, A-LIST, 6 Apr. 2018
  • Their children read this quest as emptiness and went away before the fathers could transmute the secret wisdom, the ancient knowledge that allows a society to persist and a person to get through a Wednesday afternoon.
    Rich Cohen, Vanities, 17 Aug. 2017
  • Adès the alchemist transmuted these quotes and subjected them to further transformations.
    Christian Hertzog, San Diego Union-Tribune, 7 Aug. 2023

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'transmute.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: