- 1轉化、嬗變（一種物質變成另一種物質）；煉金術裡「點石成金」的那個轉化，物理學上元素的嬗變也用這個字。
The changing of one substance or one kind of thing into a different substance or kind of thing. Not just a new shape or a new colour — the thing itself becomes something else. Water freezing into ice is not really transmutation, because it is still water. Lead becoming gold would be.
That gold example is where the word lives in most people's heads. For hundreds of years, alchemists tried to find a way to turn cheap metal into gold, and 'transmutation' was their word for it. Modern science did eventually change one element into another inside a nuclear reactor, and scientists still call that transmutation — so the word has a real technical home in physics and chemistry today, especially when people talk about transmutation of nuclear waste into safer material.
Outside science, it is used for deep change in general: the transmutation of grief into art, the transmutation of a hobby into a career. Used this way it sounds serious, a little old-fashioned, a little grand — a writer's word, not a chatting word.
It is a noun; the verb is 'transmute'. Common pattern: 'the transmutation of A into B'.
組成trans- 'across, over' + mutare 'to change' (Latin) + -ation, the ending that turns an action into a thing you can name. So: the act of changing across from one state into another. It came into English in the late 1300s through Old French transmutacion, from Latin.
同家族的字
- mutatesame Latin mutare 'to change' — as in a gene that changes
- mutationsame mutare + -ation; a change, especially in living things
- mutualsame mutare root, through the idea of things exchanged between two sides
- commutesame mutare — literally 'change together'; a prison sentence commuted is changed to a lighter one
- transmutethe verb this noun is built from — same trans- + mutare
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
transmutationnoun/tɹanzmjuːˈteɪʃn̩/
- 1
obsoleteChange, alteration.
- 2
The conversion of one thing into something else; transformation.
- Up I rose and forth I fared: / Took my plunge within the bath-pool, pacified the watch-dog scared, / Saw proceed the transmutation—Jura's black to one gold glow, […]
- 3
alchemypseudoscienceThe conversion of one thing into something else; transformation.
- The transmutation of metals was secondary to the main aim, which was the spiritual transformation of the adept.
- 4
The conversion of one thing into something else; transformation.
- Years later, scientists learned that the sun’s light—visible and invisible—is merely the by-product of a process alchemists had vainly tried to reproduce for centuries—the transmutation of one element into another. That nature accomplishes this before our very eyes, and that it is what creates the solar heat and light that supports all life, was suspected by no one. The revelation came as a complete surprise.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。