adaptive
Americanadjective
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Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of adaptive
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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.
Injured in a playground accident in 2023, Luke now uses a wheelchair, but that hasn’t stopped him from pursuing all the things that he loves, including adaptive basketball.
From Los Angeles Times • May 21, 2026
"To disentangle the relative roles of innovation and environmental change, we need further analyses of trait-dependent diversification, fossil-informed timelines and performance tests that link true crabs' sideways movement to adaptive advantages," Kawabata adds.
From Science Daily • May 2, 2026
QNX is the operating system that enables all kinds of driver assistance: collision warnings, blind-spot notifications, adaptive cruise control, pedestrian detection and steering you back into a lane when you’re drifting into trouble.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 2, 2026
The adaptive category doesn't yet use the same classifications for disabilities as the Paralympics.
From BBC • Apr. 22, 2026
It can be argued that youthful derring- do is in fact evolutionarily adaptive, a behavior encoded in our genes.
From "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer
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.
