ADOPTION

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does adoption mean? 

• ADOPTION (noun)
  The noun ADOPTION has 3 senses:

1. the act of accepting with approval; favorable reception

2. a legal proceeding that creates a parent-child relation between persons not related by blood; the adopted child is entitled to all privileges belonging to a natural child of the adoptive parents (including the right to inherit)

3. the appropriation (of ideas or words etc) from another source

  Familiarity information: ADOPTION used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ADOPTION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The act of accepting with approval; favorable reception

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

acceptance; acceptation; adoption; espousal

Context example:

the proposal found wide acceptance

Hypernyms ("adoption" is a kind of...):

approval; approving; blessing (the formal act of approving)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "adoption"):

bosom; embrace (a close affectionate and protective acceptance)

Derivation:

adopt (choose and follow; as of theories, ideas, policies, strategies or plans)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A legal proceeding that creates a parent-child relation between persons not related by blood; the adopted child is entitled to all privileges belonging to a natural child of the adoptive parents (including the right to inherit)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("adoption" is a kind of...):

legal proceeding; proceeding; proceedings ((law) the institution of a sequence of steps by which legal judgments are invoked)

Domain category:

jurisprudence; law (the collection of rules imposed by authority)

Derivation:

adopt (take into one's family)

Sense 3

Meaning:

The appropriation (of ideas or words etc) from another source

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

adoption; borrowing

Context example:

the borrowing of ancient motifs was very apparent

Hypernyms ("adoption" is a kind of...):

appropriation (a deliberate act of acquisition of something, often without the permission of the owner)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "adoption"):

naturalisation; naturalization (changing the pronunciation of a borrowed word to agree with the borrowers' phonology)

misappropriation (wrongful borrowing)

crossover (the appropriation of a new style (especially in popular music) by combining elements of different genres in order to appeal to a wider audience)

Derivation:

adopt (take up the cause, ideology, practice, method, of someone and use it as one's own)

adopt (take up and practice as one's own)

 Context examples 

Children who are eligible for adoption come from many different settings.

(Adoption, NIH)

The program supports clinical trials and other appropriate research, fosters technological development, and encourages the publication of scientific findings and adoption of early detection practices.

(Early Detection Branch, NCI Thesaurus)

An exemption based on circumstances existing prior to the adoption of some policy.

(Grandfather Clause, NCI Thesaurus)

A domestic group, or a number of domestic groups linked through descent (demonstrated or stipulated) from a common ancestor, marriage, or adoption.

(Family, NCI Thesaurus)

Chlorination is one of the cheapest and most widely available methods to make drinking water safe, but poor taste and bad smell of chlorinated water are major barriers to adoption.

(Chlorine dispensers fitted to public taps cut child diarrhoea, SciDev.Net)

While electric vehicles offer many advantages—including reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the country's dependence on imported petroleum—at least one barrier stands in the way of their large-scale adoption: range anxiety.

(New, high-energy rechargeable batteries, NSF)

It is, alternatively, the month to put in your application for adoption.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love; but the very obviousness of the advantages to the husband's own happiness offered by this plan convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption of which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world would act as I wished to act.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Promotion of the use of available health care resources and the adoption of more healthful lifestyles, and attempts to make resources available to underserved populations and to make these populations aware of the resource availability.

(Health Promotion and Care, NCI Thesaurus)

Half a dozen other sallow Hebrew faces showed how energetically the Jews of Houndsditch and Whitechapel had taken to the sport of the land of their adoption, and that in this, as in more serious fields of human effort, they could hold their own with the best.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)