Picture a thing that keeps going, keeps copying itself, and quietly comes out a little different each time. Nobody decided on the change and nobody was watching for it. The new version is still clearly related to the old one — you can trace the line back — but it is not the same thing any more, and after enough small changes the old way of dealing with it stops working.
From the word’s history
Wiktionary records mutate as first attested in 1796, a back-formation from mutation, ultimately from Latin mūtō 'to exchange, to change', and a doublet of moult. The plain 'change' meaning is the older one; biology later narrowed it to genetic change.
Wiktionary 記載 mutate 最早出現於 1796 年，是從 mutation 反推出來的動詞，源頭為拉丁文 mūtō（交換、改變），並與 moult（換毛）同源。值得注意的是「改變」才是比較老的意思，基因的用法是生物學後來把它收窄的結果。
Wiktionary etymology supplied in evidence packet (kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:769511347:10941)
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。