adoptive

UK/əˈdɒptɪv/US/əˈdɒptɪv/

adjectiveB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,023 of 15,258leans written

Adoptive means related through adoption rather than by birth. Adoptive parents, his adoptive country, an adoptive family.

The distinction is careful: adoptive describes the parent and adopted the child, so adoptive parents raise an adopted son. Of a country it means one somebody made their own rather than was born in.

Definitions of adoptive

1adjectiveadoptiveRelated through adoption rather than by birth.B2+
“She has always called her adoptive parents Mum and Dad.”

adoptive is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin
adoptō
Middle French
adopter
English
adopt
English, today
adoptive

From adopt + -ive. adopt comes from Middle French adopter, from Latin adoptō; ad + optō, equivalent to ad- + opt.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

adoptive in the wild

Legal adoptions permanently transfer all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from the biological parents to the adoptive parents.
Adoption
Under head writer, Robert Guza, Lucas is very close with his adoptive cousins, Maxie and Georgie Jones.
Lucas Jones
In October 2012, the adoptive couple petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States to review the case.
Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the adoptō family

adopt

adoptive — used about once every 5,661 pages · #10,023 · point at the bar for the others

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