Co-opt

/ˈkəʊˌɒpt/ · verb

Meaning

(transitive) To elect as a fellow member of a group, such as a committee..

Definitions by Sense

1. (transitive) To elect as a fellow member of a group, such as a committee.
2. (transitive) To commandeer, appropriate or take over.
3. (transitive) To absorb or assimilate into an established group, movement, category, etc.

Example Sentences

Artists' engagement with bleeding-edge tech will always have the potential to critique its destructive civil and military applications, as well as the potential to be co-opted by them—as propaganda or R&D—as the rise of the so-called knowledge economy has amply demonstrated.

In the resolution between the culture and the counterculture, it is impossible to tell who co-opted whom, because in reality the bohemians and the bourgeois co-opted each other. They emerge from this process as bourgeois bohemians, or Bobos.

Its opening track, Mastermind, offers one possible answer to a theoretical question about what prog rock might have sounded like in the highly unlikely event that it had co-opted Giorgio Moroder’s brand of electronic disco: nearly seven meandering, episodic minutes of unlikely chord changes […]

Synonyms for co-opt

Antonyms for co-opt

Related Words

Word Forms

• co-opts
• co-opting
• co-opted
• coopt
• coöpt

Usage Notes

Choose a synonym only when it preserves the intended meaning, tone, and grammar of the full sentence.

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