adapt と adopt の違い

adapt と adopt はよく似た意味を持ち混乱しやすいです。

チャット爺に訊いてみました。

“Adapt” and “adopt” are two words that have distinct meanings and are used in different contexts:

Adapt:
- Meaning: To adapt means to adjust or modify something to suit a new condition or environment. It involves changing oneself or something else to become more suitable for a particular situation or purpose.
- Usage:
  - Personal Context: You might adapt to a new culture when you move to a different country, meaning you adjust your habits and behavior to fit in with the new surroundings.
  - Professional Context: A business might adapt its strategies to meet the changing needs of the market.
- Related Concepts: Flexibility, adjustment, modification.
Adopt:
- Meaning: To adopt means to take up, choose, or accept something. It often involves embracing an idea, practice, or policy and making it one’s own. It can also refer to legally taking someone else’s child into one’s family and raising them as one’s own.
- Usage:
  - Personal Context: You might adopt a child, meaning you legally take the child into your family and become their parent.
  - Professional or Ideological Context: A company might adopt a new method or technology, meaning they start using the method or technology in their operations. Similarly, you might adopt a certain lifestyle or mindset, meaning you choose and embrace that particular way of living or thinking.
- Related Concepts: Acceptance, embracing, taking up.

In essence, “adapt” is about changing or modifying oneself or something to suit new conditions, while “adopt” is about choosing and accepting something as your own. Despite their differences, both words imply a process of transformation or change, whether it’s transforming oneself to fit into new circumstances (adapt) or integrating something external into one’s life or system (adopt).