the act or process of creating or developing something
The rapid formation of ice on the pond surprised the children.
Language teachers study the formation of new words over time.
✦ Borrowed from Latin formatio meaning ‘a shaping, a forming’, from formare ‘to form’.
a physical structure or pattern that has been naturally or artificially created
Tourists flocked to see the towering sandstone formation in the desert.
Coral reefs are a delicate formation built by tiny sea creatures.
an orderly arrangement or pattern in which people, animals, or vehicles move or stand
The soldiers marched in perfect formation during the parade.
Five jets streaked across the sky in a tight V formation.
a thorough or dramatic change in form, appearance, or character
The abandoned warehouse underwent a stunning transformation into luxury lofts.
After months of training, Marco's body transformation amazed his friends.
✦ from Latin transformare “to change in shape,” from trans- “across” + formare “to form.”
in mathematics, a rule that maps every point of a figure or space to another point, often changing its position, size, or orientation
A rotation by 90 degrees is a common geometric transformation.
The programmer used a matrix transformation to render the 3-D model.
✦ adopted into mathematical vocabulary in the 19th century to describe operations that change geometric figures.
in genetics, the process by which a cell takes up foreign DNA and expresses it
Scientists used bacterial transformation to produce insulin.
Heat shock is a common method to induce plasmid transformation in bacteria.
✦ coined in early 20th-century microbiology after Frederick Griffith’s 1928 experiments showing bacteria could change form when exposed to material from other strains.
