Kafkaesque: how it came to mean what you want it to mean

The process of transforming is either called metamorphosis or “Autobots, roll out!”. Out of those, the lesser iconic “metamorphosis” can be broken down into three distinct Greek roots; “meta” meaning “beyond or change”, plus “morph” meaning “shape”, and “-osis” for “process”. It’s therefore literally, the process of taking a shape beyond one’s current one.

When you move beyond physics, you go in the realm of metaphysics, or more commonly known as taking arts. More commonly still, change in one’s body due to whatever we throw down our food-pipe is metabolism (“bole” means throw in Greek, this is possibly where we get the word “ball” from). Due to its somewhat transcendental meaning, literally, it came to be associated with anything so. A joke about the joke is a metajoke. Data about data is metadata.  

While the word alone is of Kafkesque proportions, it’s when you break it up that one may see enormous potential of words one can get out of the roots making up that one term. Calling it metametamorphosis might not be too wrong then?