adopt

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To take into one's family through legal means and raise as one's own child.
2. v. To take and follow (a course of action, for example) by choice or assent: adopt a new technique.
3. v. To take up and make one's own: adopt a new idea.
4. v. To take on or assume: adopted an air of importance.
5. v. To vote to accept: adopt a resolution.
6. v. To choose as standard or required in a course: adopt a new line of English textbooks.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To choose for or take to one's self; make one's own by selection or assent; receive or agree to as a personal belonging or opinion: as, to adopt a name or an idea; an adopted citizen or country; the meeting adopted the resolution.
2. Specifically, to admit into a relation of affiliation; confer the rights or privileges of kinship upon, as one who is not naturally related or connected; especially, to receive and treat as a child or member of one's family, etc.: as, the orphans were adopted by friends. See adoption, 2. To take or receive into any kind of new relationship: as, to adopt a person as an heir, or as a friend, guide, or example.
3. In euchre, to play with the suit turned up for trumps: a privilege of the dealer.

Wiktionary

1. v. transitive To take by choice into relationship, as, child, heir, friend, citizen, etc.
2. v. transitive To take voluntarily (a child of other parents) to be in the place of, or as, one's own child.
3. v. transitive To obtain (a pet) from a shelter or the wild.
4. v. transitive To take by choice into the scope of one's responsibility.
5. v. transitive To take or receive as one's own what is not so naturally.
6. v. transitive To select and take or approve.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To take by choice into relationship, as, child, heir, friend, citizen, etc.; esp. to take voluntarily (a child of other parents) to be in the place of, or as, one's own child.
2. v. To take or receive as one's own what is not so naturally; to select and take or approve

WordNet 3.0

1. v. put into dramatic form
2. v. choose and follow; as of theories, ideas, policies, strategies or plans
3. v. take up the cause, ideology, practice, method, of someone and use it as one's own
4. v. take on a certain form, attribute, or aspect
5. v. take up and practice as one's own
6. v. take on titles, offices, duties, responsibilities
7. v. take into one's family