(1) Someone who performs a certain function. (2) Someone who holds a position in a political party or government.

For most of us, being described as a *functionary* wouldn't be a compliment. The word refers especially to a person of lower rank, with little or no authority, who must carry out someone else's orders. *Bureaucrat* is often a synonym. However, *functionary* can also refer to the world beyond government and offices; a character in a play, for example, could be called a functionary if it was obvious that her sole function was to keep the plot moving.

To fail to operate in the normal or usual manner.

A malfunctioning switch might keep us from turning on a light. A malfunctioning heart valve might require replacement with an artificial valve, and if your immune system malfunctions it may start to attack healthy cells. And a *malfunction* in a voting machine could result in hundreds of votes being miscounted.

No longer, living, existing, or functioning.

If you know that *de-* often means “the opposite of” (see DE), it's easy to guess the meaning of *defunct*. Shakespeare seems to have been the first writer to use this adjective, in *Henry V*. Defunct American political parties include the Greenback Party, the Readjuster Party, and the Nullifier Party. Defunct Academy Awards categories include Best Dance Direction and Best Assistant Director. Defunct U.S. auto models include the Dudly Bug, the LuLu, the Hupmobile, the Gas-au-lec, and the Nu-Klea Starlite. But to speak of a person as defunct would sound disrespectful—which is how it sounds in e. e. cummings's famous poem “Buffalo Bill's defunct.”

(1) Showing abnormal or unhealthy behaviors and attitudes within a group of people. (2) Being unable to function in a normal way.

*Dysfunctional* and *dysfunction* have been used for almost a hundred years, often in medical writing (“brain dysfunction,” “a dysfunctional liver”) but also by social scientists (“a dysfunctional city council,” “diplomatic dysfunction”). But they only really entered the general vocabulary in the 1980s, when therapists and talk-show hosts began talking about dysfunctional families. The signs of family dysfunction turned out to be numerous, and it soon began to seem as if pretty much all our families could be called dysfunctional.

(1) To exchange or substitute; especially to change a penalty to another one that is less severe. (2) To travel back and forth regularly.

When you commute between a suburb and a city, you're “exchanging” one location for another. When a chief executive substitutes a life sentence for the death sentence handed down by a court, he or she is commuting the original sentence. Most such *commutations* are the result of the prisoner's good behavior. A *commutator* is a device in many electric motors that regularly changes alternating current to direct current.

Not able or liable to change.

*Mutable* means simply “changeable,” so when the negative prefix *im-* is added we get its opposite. In computer programming, an immutable object is one that can't be changed after it's been created. In a constantly changing world, people who hunger for things as immutable as the laws of nature may try to observe an immutable moral code and set of values. Unfortunately, *immutability* isn't a basic quality of many things in this world.

A change in the order of a set of objects; rearrangement, variation.

There are six permutations of the letters A, B, and C, selected two at a time: AB, AC, BC, BA, CA, and CB. As you see, order is important in permutations. (By contrast, there are only three *combinations*: AB, AC, and BC.) Permutation is an important concept in mathematics, especially in the field of probability. But we can use the word more generally to mean any change produced by rearranging existing parts without introducing new ones. Some soap operas, for example, love permutations; the cast of regulars is constantly being rearranged into new pairs, and even triangles.

(1) To change in shape, appearance, or nature, especially for the better; to transform. (2) To experience such a change.

*Transmutation* changes something over into something else. Thus, a writer may transmute his life into stories or novels, and an arranger might transmute a lively march tune into a quiet lullaby. In the “Myth of Er” at the end of Plato's *Republic,* for example, human souls are transmuted into the body and existence of their choice. Having learned from their last life what they do *not* want to be, many choose transmutation into something that seems better. A meek man chooses to be transmuted into a tyrant, a farmer into a dashing (but short-lived) warrior, and so on. But very few seem to have learned anything from their former life that would make their choice a real improvement.