evolve

verb

1. (transitive)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”

2. (transitive)To change or transform (something).

   “Over several years the author evolved the story originally drafted as a novella into a real epic.”

3. (transitive)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.”

   “The interpreter has spent a whole lot of time working the music before the performance, trying to evolve the most accurate translation possible.”

   “[…]I ask you, rather, to evolve a suitable plan with due deliberation and report it to me."¹⁴”

4. (transitive)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.”

5. (transitive)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 so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

   “The ice age was nearly two million years old by the time the woolly mammoth evolved.”

6. (transitive)To give off (a gas such as carbon dioxide or oxygen) during a chemical reaction.

   “to evolve odours”

7. (obsolete, transitive)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— […]”

8. (intransitive)To move in regular procession through a system.

   “[T]he principles which Art involves, Science alone evolves.”

   “Not by any power evolved from man's own resources, but by a power which descended from above.”

9. (intransitive)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.”

10. (intransitive)Of a trait; to develop within a population through biological evolution.

    “How long ago did beaks evolve?”