fosterverb(TAKE CARE OF)
[ T ]
to take an animal that has been left in a place such as a rescue centre, and keep it as your pet:
Only about 20 percent of all dogs and cats that come into the rescue centre will be adopted.
She lives in a 3-bedroomed home with five dogs she adopted from an animal shelter.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Parenting & caring for children
adopt
adoptable
adopted
adoptee
adoption
caretaking
child-rearing
childless
childlessness
childmind
kinship care
kinship carer
lawnmower parent
looked-after
milestone
skin to skinidiom
snowploughing
stay-at-home
swaddle
unadoptable

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Protection and protectors

adoptverb (START USING)

B2[ T ]
to accept or start to use something new: 接受;采用;采纳
I think it's time to adopt a different strategy in my dealings with him.我觉得在和他的交往中该采用一种不同的策略了。
The new tax would force companies to adopt energy-saving measures.征收新税将迫使公司采取节能措施。
He's adopted a remarkably light-hearted attitude towards the situation.面对这种局面，他摆出了一种异乎寻常的轻描淡写的态度。
It was a most fruitful discussion, with both sides agreeing to adopt a common policy.这是一次富有成果的讨论，双方达成一致采用共同的政策。
Since our research so far has not produced any answers to this problem, we need to adopt a different approach to it.到目前为止，我们还没有研究出任何解决这一问题的方法，所以我们得换一种思路了。
We will have to adopt a more scientific approach in the future.我们将来得采用更审慎系统的方法。
Several governments have adopted tough new anti-terrorist legislation in the wake of the attacks.袭击事件发生后，数国政府已经通过新的立法，严厉打击恐怖主义。
The budget proposal was adopted at the president's behest.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Using and misusing
adopt
adoption
avail
avail yourself of something
be/go heavy on somethingidiom
exhaust
give/allow something full playidiom
go into something
go through
gobble something up
make capital out of somethingidiom
recycle
spare
swallow
tap
turn over
turn to someone/something
turn/use something to good accountidiom
unblock
underuse

adoptverb (CHOOSE)

[ T ]
to choose someone or something or take something as your own: 选定;选用;采用
Dr Kennedy has been adopted as the party's candidate for South Cambridge.肯尼迪博士被选定为该党南剑桥地区的候选人。
[ T ]
to start behaving in a particular way, especially by choice: 养成某种习惯
Roz has adopted one or two funny mannerisms since she's been away.罗兹自她离开后养成了一两种可笑的怪癖。
She tends to adopt a falsely cheerful tone when she's upset about something.她对某事不快时，总会用一种假装愉快的语气讲话。
to adopt a subservient role/position
There is no English equivalent for 'bon appetit' so we have adopted the French expression.英语中没有和 bon appetit 相对应的词，所以我们就借用了法语的这个表达方式。
They have adopted local customs and tried to blend in with the community.他们已经接受了当地习俗并努力融入当地社会。
The prime minister has adopted an inflexible position on immigration.首相在移民问题上采取了强硬的立场。

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Taking and choosing
adopt
adopted
adoption
appoint
bags I...idiom
be your best betidiom
cull
empanel
faute de mieux
favoured
filterable
first choice
plump for something/someone
Robin Hood
select
selection
selective
skim
you name itidiom
you pays your money and you takes your choice/chanceidiom

adoptverb (PAY FOR)

[ T ]
to pay money in order to have your name connected with a particular thing, especially in order to help an organization raise money:
For just $25, you can adopt a word for an entire year.
[ T ]UK
to agree to be responsible for a road being maintained(= kept in good condition):
The council said the road was never adopted and so it is not obliged to repair it.
We adopted a red panda at our local wildlife park.
Throughout Missouri, 4,600 groups have adopted highways and agreed to pick up trash, mow grass or carry out similar duties.
When you design a housing estate, in order to get the roads adopted, you have to satisfy the highway authority.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Backing, supporting & defending
adopt
advocacy
affirmation
ally yourself to/with someone
argumentation
bail out
bat
bet
buoy
champion
commitment
over-favour
pander to someone/something
prop something up
provide
provide for someone
solidly
sustenance
underpin
wave/show/fly the flagidiom

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Roads & routes in general
Roads: urban & residential streets

Examples of adopting

adopting

In English, many past and present participles of verbs can be used as adjectives. Some of these examples may show the adjective use.

Or, adopting a distributed point of view, conceptual representations of verbs may share fewer meaning elements in a bilingual's memory than those of nouns.
Adopting different numerations for the two question types provides a simple way around this ban on pure optionality.
Since the epidemiology of varicella varies worldwide, adopting foreign prevention policies may not always be applicable.
Somewhat surprisingly, experience in agriculture was negatively associated with adopting new agricultural practices (controlling for age).
Methodologically, these results were enabled by adopting a grammaticalization perspective on defining the envelope of variation.
Signals of credibility predicated on adopting degrees of homogeneity are therefore focal, and signal receivers look for them in evaluating the credibility of outsiders.
They failed to realize that they were thereby adopting not an economic but a juridical standpoint.
The poor rates increasingly paid for cottage rents, off-loaded by landowners adopting stricter estate management practices.
The episode thus serves as a case in point of the necessity of adopting a broader perspective.
So the majority of works we presented in this article try to reconcile both requirements - automation and high-quality mappings - by adopting semi-automatic approaches.
This issue is tackled by adopting a uniform underlying agent architecture, the multi-context architecture.
And it makes defamilisation an adequate analytical tool as it relies heavily on studying choices and options rather than adopting a more needs-based orientation.
The only advantage of adopting a weaker form of metabolism is that it allows virtual life and that is not sufficiently persuasive.
But a different order of conceptual and practical questions about the registration of common land in this manner is raised by adopting an environmental perspective.
In what follows, we focus on the narrow normative coverage question, adopting the second of the approaches described above.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.