Abstract The transmuted family of distributions has been receiving increased attention over the last few years. In this paper, we generalize the Marshall-Olkin extended Lomax distribution using the quadratic rank transmutation map to obtain the transmuted Marshall-Olkin extended Lomax distribution. Several properties of the new distribution are discussed including the hazard rate function, ordinary and incomplete moments, characteristic function and order statistics. We provide an estimation procedure by the maximum likelihood method and a simulation study to assess the performance of the new distribution. We prove empirically the flexibility of the new model by means of an application to a real data set. It is superior to other three and four parameter lifetime distributions.