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Adopt   /ədˈɑpt/   Listen
Adopt

verb
(past & past part. adopted; pres. part. adopting)
1.
Choose and follow; as of theories, ideas, policies, strategies or plans.  Synonyms: espouse, follow.  "The candidate espouses Republican ideals"
2.
Take up and practice as one's own.  Synonyms: borrow, take over, take up.
3.
Take on titles, offices, duties, responsibilities.  Synonyms: assume, take on, take over.
4.
Take on a certain form, attribute, or aspect.  Synonyms: acquire, assume, take, take on.  "The story took a new turn" , "He adopted an air of superiority" , "She assumed strange manners" , "The gods assume human or animal form in these fables"
5.
Take into one's family.  Synonym: take in.
6.
Put into dramatic form.  Synonyms: dramatise, dramatize.
7.
Take up the cause, ideology, practice, method, of someone and use it as one's own.  Synonyms: embrace, espouse, sweep up.  "They adopted the Jewish faith"



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"Adopt" Quotes from Famous Books



... principles, and pursuing systematic measures. For this reason a change of Chief Governor, ought to be nothing more than a simple transfer of government, and by no means to make any change in that political system respecting this country which England must adopt, let who will be the minister and whichever party may acquire the ascendancy, if she means to preserve Ireland as a part ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... their hands, face and body. There are some hygienic students who have adopted the idea of "cleansing" the bowels with warm water once or twice a week, which practice is quite in advance of the annual or monthly attention. All have reasons for the manner and time they adopt to "cleanse" the bowels; and yet they find that they are not cleansed properly, as they still have spells of biliousness and misery. They wonder at themselves for being so rash and bold as to take an enema twice a week, and begin to feel that they have reached a point ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... much more true of Mr. Hardy than it was of Goncourt, and more true than it is of any other English poet except Donne. There is absolutely no observation too minute, no flutter of reminiscence too faint, for Mr. Hardy to adopt as the subject of a metaphysical lyric, and his skill in this direction has grown upon him; it is nowhere so remarkable as in his latest volume, aptly termed Moments of Vision. Everything in village life is grist to his mill; he seems to make no selection, and his field ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... happy: he did not purpose to live in idleness and extravagance, for such a life would have been equally incompatible with his habits and his principles. He was fond of children, and as he had no sons, he determined to adopt one of his relations. He had two nephews, and he invited both of them to his house, that he might have an opportunity of judging of their dispositions, and of the habits ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... shine out brightly for the dog of Skye, the first rays of it that reached him being reflected from no less a luminary than the Crown of Great Britain; for it was among the Scottish fancies of England's Queen to adopt as a prime favorite this hitherto obscure quadruped. Reckoned until that time—if anybody took the trouble of computing him at all—as one of the ugliest of his race, he at once found himself invested with all the attributes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various


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