evolve

Verb

1. To move (something) in regular procession through a system.
   • The animal soul sooner expands and evolves it self to its full orb and extent than the humane Soul - a. 1677 (date written), Matthew Hale, The Primitive Origination of Mankind, Considered and Examined According to the...

   Synonyms: develop progress

2. To change or transform (something).
   • Over several years the author evolved the story originally drafted as a novella into a real epic.

   Synonyms: develop convert draw evolve metamorphize metamorphose reconvert shift transfigurate transfigure transform transmogrify transmute transume

3. To cause (something) to come into being or develop.
   • You will remove the pig, place it in the car, and drive it to my house in Wiltshire. That is the plan I have evolved. - 1939, P. G. Wodehouse, Uncle Fred in the Springtime:
   • The interpreter has spent a whole lot of time working the music before the performance, trying to evolve the most accurate translation possible. - 1979 August 25, Vicki Gabriner, Susan Freundlich, “Bridging the Gaps...
   • […]I ask you, rather, to evolve a suitable plan with due deliberation and report it to me."¹⁴ - 2005, Donald Keene, quoting Emperor Kōmei, Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His world, 1852–1912, New York: Columbia University...

   Synonyms: contrive generate bring forth cause create develop engender evolve gin up innate form forthbring make produce spawn

4. Of a population: to acquire or develop (a trait) in the process of biological evolution.
   • How long ago did birds evolve beaks?
   • Oxygen levels on Earth skyrocketed 2.4 billion years ago, when cyanobacteria evolved photosynthesis: the ability to convert water and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates and waste oxygen using solar energy. - 2013...
5. To cause (a population, a species, etc.) to change genetic composition over successive generations through the process of evolution.
   • A hundred thousand years from now, will Homo sapiens have evolved into beings unrecognizable to their ancestors?
   • There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from...
   • The ice age was nearly two million years old by the time the woolly mammoth evolved. - 2018, Tim Flannery, Europe: A Natural History, page 204:
6. To give off (a gas such as carbon dioxide or oxygen) during a chemical reaction.
   • to evolve odours
7. To wind or unwind (something).
   • And come, my Muſe! that lov'ſt the ſylvan ſhade, / Evolve the mazes, and the miſt diſpel; / Tranſlate the ſong; convince my doubting maid / No ſolemn Derviſe can explain ſo vvell— […] - [1795], James Woodhouse, “[To...
8. To move in regular procession through a system.
   • [T]he principles which Art involves, Science alone evolves. - 1840, William Whewell, “Of Art and Science”, in The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded upon Their History. […], volume II, London: John W[illiam]...
   • Not by any power evolved from man's own resources, but by a power which descended from above. - 1870, John Shairp, Culture and Religion:
9. To change, to transform.
   • What began as a few lines of code has now evolved into a million-line behemoth.
   • An aide of Shah told Reuters that Shah had an early penchant for poetry that evolved into an affinity for rap music. - 2026 March 11, Chad de Guzman, “Who Is Balendra Shah, the Rapper On Track to Become Nepal’s Next...
10. Of a trait; to develop within a population through biological evolution.
    • How long ago did beaks evolve?