metamorphosis

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)A transformation, such as one performed by magic.

   “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 ?”

2. (countable, uncountable)A noticeable change in character, appearance, function, or condition.

   “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.”

3. (countable, uncountable)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).
4. (countable, uncountable)A change, usually degenerative, in the structure of a specific body tissue.