According to Merriam-Webster, transmogrify means:
- to change or alter greatly and often with grotesque or humorous effect
Ayelet Waldman wrote:
As a novelist, I mined my history, my family and my memory, but in a very specific way. Writing fiction, I never made use of experiences immediately as they happened. I needed to let things fester in my memory, mature and transmogrify into something meaningful.
I might use the word transmogrify in a sentence like this:
In the butcher’s gnarled hands, the cleaver transmogrified into a bloodied, murderous instrument of death.