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Adapt vs Assimilate - What's the difference?

adapt | assimilate |

As verbs the difference between adapt and assimilate

is that adapt is to make suitable; to make to correspond; to fit or suit; to proportion while assimilate is to incorporate nutrients into the body, especially after digestion.

As an adjective adapt

is adapted; fit; suited; suitable.

adapt

English

Verb

(en verb)
  • To make suitable; to make to correspond; to fit or suit; to proportion.
  • To fit by alteration; to modify or remodel for a different purpose; to adjust: as, to adapt a story or a foreign play for the stage; to adapt an old machine to a new manufacture.
  • To make by altering or fitting something else; to produce by change of form or character: as, to bring out a play adapted from the French; a word of an adapted form.
  • To change oneself so as to be adapted.
  • They could not adapt to the new climate and so perished.

    Derived terms

    * adaptable * adaptation * adaptative * adapter * adaption * adaptitude * adaptly * adaptness * adaptor

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Adapted; fit; suited; suitable.
  • (Jonathan Swift)

    References

    *

    assimilate

    English

    Verb

    (assimilat)
  • To incorporate nutrients into the body, especially after digestion.
  • Food is assimilated and converted into organic tissue.
  • * Isaac Newton
  • Hence also animals and vegetables may assimilate their nourishment.
  • To incorporate or absorb knowledge into the mind.
  • The teacher paused in her lecture to allow the students to assimilate what she had said.
  • * Merivale
  • His mind had no power to assimilate the lessons.
  • To absorb a group of people into a community.
  • The aliens in the science-fiction film wanted to assimilate human beings into their own race.
  • To compare a thing to something similar.
  • To bring to a likeness or to conformity; to cause a resemblance between.
  • * John Bright
  • to assimilate our law to the law of Scotland
  • * Cowper
  • Fast falls a fleecy shower; the downy flakes / Assimilate all objects.

    Synonyms

    *(To incorporate or absorb knowledge into the mind) process *(absorb a group of people into a community) integrate