To change one substance or kind of thing into another kind of thing. This is the verb behind 'transmutation'. The change goes deep: what you end up with is not the same stuff arranged differently, it is different stuff. It keeps a smell of magic and old science about it. In stories, a wizard transmutes stone into bread; in history books, alchemists tried to transmute base metals into gold; in physics, particles can be transmuted into other elements. Because of that history, the word always sounds a little more dramatic than 'change'. Everyday writers borrow it for emotional or social change, and this is probably where students will meet it most: pain transmuted into strength, anger transmuted into action, a rough draft transmuted into a real book. The grammar is usually 'transmute A into B'. It also appears as a passive — 'was transmuted into' — and sometimes with no object at all: 'over time, the fear transmuted into curiosity'. Register: formal and literary. You would meet it in an essay or a novel, rarely in speech. If a friend asked how your weekend was, nobody would say their mood transmuted.

使轉化、使變質（把一種東西變成另一種東西）；也用來說把某種情緒「轉化」成別的東西。