metamorphosis
/ˌmɛtəˈmoɹfəsɪs/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.03 in modern English
22
Scrabble Score
13
Letters
5
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A change in the form and often habits of an animal after the embryonic stage during normal development (e.g. the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly or a tadpole into a frog).
Countable; Uncountable
Example Sentences
- "With Severne she along doth go, / Her Metamorphosis to show ; / And makes the wand’ring Wy declaim / In honour of the British name."
- "I wonder’d at ſuch a Metamorphoſis in ſo ſhort a time, he told me, ’twas for the death of his Wife, that Nature had thus antedated his Years ; ’tis true, that a weighty ſetled ſorrow is of that force, that beſides the contraction of the Spirits, it will work upon the radical moiſture, and dry it up, ſo that the Hair can have no moiſture at the Root."
- "Where is the gloriously-decisive change, / Metamorphosis the immeasurable / Of human clay to divine gold, we looked / Should, in some poor sort, justify its price ?"
- "The station has been refurbished both at ground level and below ground, where the wide, fluorescently lit platforms are an almost unrecognisable metamorphosis of the dingy, reeking Low Level of old."
- "Not since a journalist morphed into Al Pacino in The Devil’s Advocate has a metamorphosis been so jarring. Of course, there were clues: Michael kicked a puppy in the very second episode, and no self-respecting Elysium so closely resembles a chichi outdoor mall in Pasadena."
Etymology
First attested in 1533, from Latin metamorphōsis, from Ancient Greek μεταμόρφωσις (metamórphōsis), from μετά (metá, “change”) + μορφή (morphḗ, “form”). Analyzable as meta- + -morph + -osis
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: metamorphōsis, μεταμόρφωσις
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˌmɛtəˈmoɹfəsɪs/
- British English: /ˌmɛtəˈmɔːfəsɪs/