Counteradaptation
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 adaptation that counters a change to an organism's environment; The development of tolerance; the adaptation of the body's homeostatic mechanisms to counteract a drug effect. countable, uncountable
"Repeated AOD exposure also can lead to adaptations in the reward circuitry that oppose and neutralize a drug's effects (i.e., counteradaptation)."
- 2 adaptation that counters a change to an organism's environment; The evolutionary adaptation of one species to adaptive changes by another. countable, uncountable
"Thus the plant's allomonic adaptation has been exactly reversed by this insect's counteradaptation."
- 3 adaptation that counters a change to an organism's environment; The distortion of one sensory modality that accompanies adaptation to alterations in a perceptual cues from a related modality. countable, uncountable
"Several investigators haye found little or no adaptation to size, and the phenonmenon of counteradaptation has been offered as an alternative to the explanation that adaptation to a purely visual phenomenon (such as size) occurs through a different process than does adaptation to hand-eye coordination (as adaptation to distance is often measured)."
Example
More examples"Repeated AOD exposure also can lead to adaptations in the reward circuitry that oppose and neutralize a drug's effects (i.e., counteradaptation)."
Etymology
From counter- + adaptation.
More for "counteradaptation"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.