shapeshift

present singular third person shapeshifts · participle present shapeshifting · participle past shapeshifted · past shapeshifted

1. intransitivebiologyTo change one's shape or form (into another) through often magical means, normally applied only to living beings.

   I can't shapeshift Zane, I only look like this I always have.

   2019, Emily Rayven, Gateway To Brienka

   3 more examples

   For it was by shape-shifting and magic art, as poets tell, that Paris first beguiled Fair Helen.

   1891, H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang, The World's Desire, volume II, Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, page 13

   Journey in exactly the same way as you did to shapeshift into your power animal except, this time, set your intention to shapeshift into a named ancestor.

   2010, Mike Williams, Follow the Shaman's Call: An Ancient Path for Modern Lives, page 91

   But to embed oneself in an irregular and unpredictable food supply as mycelium does, one must be able to shapeshift.

   2020, Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, page 57

2. figurativelyintransitiveTo undergo a noticeable change (in character for example), to metamorphosize.

   While Chelsea Wolfe has often shapeshifted in terms of how she presents her music, one thing remains constant: her big mood.

   2019, Adam Turner-Heffer, Chelsea Wolfe: Birth of Violence review, The Skinny, September 2019, page 57