English

Verb

turn into ‎(third-person singular simple present turns into, present participle turning into, simple past and past participle turned into)

1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To transform into; become.

   The carriage turned into a pumpkin at midnight.‎

2. (idiomatic, transitive) To transform into; cause to become.
   • 1922, Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

     "I am the nursery magic Fairy," she said. "I take care of all the playthings that the children have loved. When they are old and worn out and the children don't need them any more, then I come and take them away with me and turn them into Real."

   • 2013 June 22, “T time”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8841, page 68:

     Yet in “Through a Latte, Darkly”, a new study of how Starbucks has largely avoided paying tax in Britain, Edward Kleinbard […] shows that current tax rules make it easy for all sorts of firms to generate what he calls “stateless income”: […]. In Starbucks’s case, the firm has in effect turned the process of making an expensive cup of coffee into intellectual property.

Quotations

• 1975 from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (quotes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail on Wikiquote)

  [Sir Bedevere]: What makes you think she's a witch?

  [Peasant]: Well, she turned me into a newt!

  [Sir Bedevere]: A newt?

  [Peasant]: ... I got better.

Translations

Synonyms

• (intransitive: become): become
• (transitive: cause to become): make, make into

See also

• turn
• turn in
• turn into a pumpkin