adoptive
/əˈdɒptɪv/ (bre, ipa) · /əˈdɑːptɪv/ (ame, ipa) · /ə-ˈdäp-tiv/ (ame, mw)
adoptive — adjective
1. describing a parent, child, family, or home connected to someone through legal a
describing a parent, child, family, or home connected to someone through legal adoption rather than by birth; sometimes also describing a country or city that a person has chosen to make their home.
Dilnoza only met her adoptive parents when she was six months old.
adoptive + parents (people who legally adopted a child)
The Lin family welcomed three adoptive siblings from different parts of Vietnam.
adoptive siblings (related through adoption, not birth)
After twenty years in Lisbon, Linnea thinks of Portugal as her adoptive country.
Social workers visited the adoptive family every month during the first year.
Her adoptive mother taught her to cook the dishes from her birth country.
- biological
describes the parent or child connected by birth rather than adoption.
- birth
as in 'birth mother' or 'birth country' — the original, not the chosen one.
文法句型
adoptive + family-relation noun
adoptive + country/home
用法筆記
Almost always used before a noun (attributive), not after a verb like 'be'. Distinguish from 'adopted': 'adoptive' usually describes the parent or family doing the adopting, while 'adopted' describes the child who was taken into the family. Extended use with words like 'country', 'city', or 'home' means a place someone has chosen to live in, even though they were born somewhere else.