adaptive
Americanadjective
Other Word Forms
- adaptively adverb
- adaptiveness noun
- adaptivity noun
- nonadaptive adjective
- readaptive adjective
- readaptively adverb
- readaptiveness noun
- unadaptive adjective
- unadaptively adverb
- unadaptiveness noun
Etymology
Origin of adaptive
Compare meaning
How does adaptive compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
Use adaptive to describe people who are flexible — they don't lose their cool when plans change quickly and they are always willing to learn new ways to do things. Being adaptive helps you sail along in today's ever-changing world. What do chameleons and your grandparents who only started using computers a few years ago have in common? They are adaptive. Just as chameleons change color to match their surroundings — green when sitting on leaves, brown when climbing the tree's trunk — your grandparents learned the skills to keep up with the world around them. The opposite of adaptive is stubborn. People, lizards, or anything that refuses to change are stubborn. To welcome change is to be adaptive.
Vocabulary lists containing adaptive
30 GRE Words Beginning with "A"
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Vocabulary from the Introduction to "Reality is Broken" by Jane McGonigal
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Cosmos
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
An executive order from Trump in December 2025, entitled “Ensuring American Space Superiority,” called for “creating a responsive and adaptive national security space architecture” through allied cooperation and private sector investments.
From Salon • Apr. 9, 2026
In patients who already produce normal or elevated levels of endogenous GLP-1, flooding those same receptors with long-acting agonists may push a finely tuned system past its adaptive range.
From Slate • Mar. 22, 2026
India needs translational laboratories, accredited biobanks, adaptive trial networks and globally trusted evidence systems.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 12, 2026
The tuberculosis vaccine triggered both innate and adaptive responses, but unusually, the innate response remained active for months.
From Science Daily • Feb. 23, 2026
The part of our brain that leaps to conclusions like this is called the adaptive unconscious, and the study of this kind of decision making is one of the most important new fields in psychology.
From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
