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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

adoption.

The act of adopting.

8 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/əˈdɑp.ʃən/General-American/əˈdɒp.ʃən/Received-Pronunciation
  1. The act of adopting.

    countable · uncountable
  2. The state of being adopted; the acceptance of a child of other parents as if they were one's own child.

    countable · uncountable
    A Chinese baby girl was given away for adoption.
    Another Chinese boy was put up for adoption.
  3. An admission to an institution, for example a hospital, clinic, mental asylum.

    countable · uncountable
    the adoption of people into hospitals or monasteries
  4. The choosing and making that to be one's own which originally was not so; acceptance.

    countable · uncountable
    the adoption of opinions
    the adoption of words from another language
  5. The choosing and making that to be one's own which originally was not so; acceptance. The act of accepting and putting into effect or practice (a method, proposal, technique, etc.)

    countable · uncountable
    Our company is considering the adoption of a four-day week.
  6. The transfer from an old system to another (usually better) system.

    countable · uncountable
  7. An act of divine grace by which the redeemed in Christ are admitted to the privileges of the sons of God.

    countable · uncountable
  8. Ten consecutive wins against an opponent.

    countable · slang · uncountable
    Infuriated by his adoption yesterday, the chess master has resolved to study twice as long and twice as hard.
Where this word comes from

Borrowed from French adoption, from Latin adoptio, allied to adoptare (“to adopt”). Equivalent to adopt + -ion.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.