Quick! What's Another Word for Becoming a Vampire? Take a Vocabulary Vitamin to Find Out

Have you been transmogrified lately? Gone from an ordinary everyday person to a vampire? From a gentleman to a ghoul? From a puppy to a dishwasher? Don't laugh. Transmogrification means to change in appearance or form, especially in a bizarre or even grotesque way. To have an unpleasant metamorphosis. The alphaDictionary says transmogrify means to transfigure for the worse. "She transmogrified her hair into a ghoulish multicolored pincushion." "He was transmogrified by the transmogrification of his date when she removed her makeup." Thus we find that change can be good, and transmogrification can be bad.

For example, you may expect to witness a thrilling metamorphosis from frog to prince when you dare to smooch said frog. (Ewww.) Yet you may be appalled though strangely fascinated when smooching said prince transmogrifies him into a frog. (An embittered frog, no doubt, who will be kicked out of his former castle.) Transmogrification, the dark side, has an eerie appeal, the current interest in transmogrification into vampires being a case in point.

Let's just tear this word in little pieces and see what happens. We know that the prefix "trans-" means "across" or "beyond" and appears in many words that evoke change, such as "transform," "transpire," and "translate," but what to do with "mogrify?" According to Dr. Goodword "This corrupted verb is a conflation of transmigrate and transfigure." He notes too that "apparently, only people were transmogrified originally; now we can do it to anything."

In the 1700's, Scotland's national bard Robert Burns employed the word in verse, to capture the grotesque and sometimes humorous effect of transmogrification: "Social life and Glee sit down, . . . Till, quite transmugrify'd, they're grown Debauchery and Drinking." (Note quaint and antiquated spelling.) The word transmogrify doesn't get much of a workout these days, so please begin at once applying it to all your vampire friends. You'll be doing your word calisthenics, building your vocabulary biceps, and astounding your less articulate colleagues as well.

trans• mog• ri• fy
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verb (used with object),-fied, -fy• ing.
to change in appearance or form, esp. strangely or grotesquely; transform.
Origin:
1650-60; earlier also transmigrify, transmography; appar. a pseudo-Latinism with trans-, -ify
-Related forms, trans• mog• ri• fi• ca• tion, noun

Sources;
transmogrify - alphaDictionary * Free English On-line Dictionary

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 23 Mar. 2010. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/transmogrify>.

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