Exaptation
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The use of a biological structure or function for a purpose other than that for which it initially evolved. countable, uncountable
"Birds initially developed wings and feathers as a means of heat regulation. The use of wings for flight is an example of exaptation."
- 2 The promotion of meaningless or redundant material so that it does new grammatical (morphosyntactic or phonological) or semantic work. broadly, countable, uncountable
"The process Haiman focuses on is exaptation, which he defines as "the promotion of meaningless or redundant material so that it does new grammatical (morphosyntactic or phonological) or semantic work" (p52)."
Example
More examples"Birds initially developed wings and feathers as a means of heat regulation. The use of wings for flight is an example of exaptation."
Etymology
Blend of ex- + adaptation. Coined 1982 by palaeontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Elisabeth Vrba to avoid the perceived teleological baggage of the existing term preadaptation.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.