transforms

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of transform.

   The new policy transforms how the company handles customer complaints.

   A caterpillar gradually transforms into a butterfly inside its cocoon.

   Note

   The -s form serves a verb that works both ways. With an object, one thing transforms another. Without one, the subject itself changes, usually with into naming what it becomes. Technical uses travel with it too: a transformer acts on electric current, and a laboratory procedure transforms a cell. The same spelling is also the plural of the mathematical noun, so only the sentence tells them apart.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of transform.

   These mathematical transforms convert signals from the time domain to the frequency domain.

   The analysis combined two different transforms to isolate the underlying pattern.

   Note

   A plural that belongs to specialists. In mathematics and signal processing, transforms are operations, often integrations, that turn one function into another, as the Fourier and Laplace transforms do. More loosely, the word names the functions those operations produce. Geologists use the same plural as shorthand for transform faults, so the field around the word decides which kind of transform is meant.

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