transmogrify

• It is curious that Psalmanazar, in his Memoirs, p. 101, uses the mongrel word transmogrify. —  Life of Johnson
• T. Jones black slang for mother. trainee See trainer. trainer an enforcer who specializes in prolonged torture to elicit certain conditioned responses from his victims, or trainees, who become highly obedient. training physical obedience training. transmogrify to maim and kill. turnkey (formerly, before reform) a prisoner-supervisor who locked and unlocked hallway doors. —  VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol XIX No 2
• A few transmogrify into fiction: I sense their dramatic potential and exploit it in my novels, memory to moonshine in a hot second. —  Hollywood Nocturne
• Why I chose this spindly little vehicle, with its look of an angry insect, I do not know, but I suspect it was a dream-wish for a tubby little fellow constantly teased about his nascent corpulence to transmogrify himself into a svelte and insubstantial "bolide." —  An Autobiography
• She scanned the note a second time, hoping that by subjecting it to her vision the content might somehow transmogrify into something less aggravating. —  Drowning World

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus