Co-opt

//ˈkoʊˌɑpt// verb

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To elect as a fellow member of a group, such as a committee. transitive
  2. 2
    take or assume for one's own use wordnet
  3. 3
    To commandeer, appropriate or take over. transitive

    "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."

  4. 4
    appoint summarily or commandeer wordnet
  5. 5
    To absorb or assimilate into an established group, movement, category, etc. transitive

    "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."

Show 2 more definitions
  1. 6
    choose or elect as a fellow member or colleague wordnet
  2. 7
    neutralize or win over through assimilation into an established group wordnet

Etymology

From Latin cooptō (“to choose, elect”), from co(m)- + optō (“to opt”).

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