Dictionary

co-opt en · VERB

Pronunciation

• /ˈkəʊˌɒpt/ (UK)
• /ˈkoʊˌɑpt/ (US)
• (US) audio
• kōˈ-ŏptˌ

Etymology

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

Meanings

1. (transitive) To elect as a fellow member of a group, such as a committee.
2. (transitive) To commandeer, appropriate or take over.
   • 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. 2009, chapter 2, in Josephine Berry Slater, Pauline van Mourik Broekman, editors, Proud to be Flesh, →ISBN:
3. (transitive) To absorb or assimilate into an established group, movement, category, etc.
   • 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. 2000, David Brooks, Bobos in Paradise […] , Simon & Schuster, →ISBN, page 43:
   • 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 […] 2016 July 7, Alexis Petridis, “Roísín Murphy: Take Her Up to Monto review – still too strange for the bigtime”, in The Guardian:

Forms

Deriveds

co-optive · co-optative · co-option · co-optation

Relateds

recuperation

Translations (26)

pl przejąć (commandeer) · es adueñarse (commandeer) · it cooptare (elect as a fellow member) · fr coopter (elect as a fellow member) · ru вобра́ть в себя́ (absorb or assimilate) · es cooptar (absorb or assimilate) · de kooptieren (elect as a fellow member) · pl wchłonąć (absorb or assimilate) · ru привлека́ть на свою́ сто́рону (absorb or assimilate) · pl zarekwirować (commandeer) · de kooptieren (absorb or assimilate) · pl dokooptowywać (elect as a fellow member) · nl toe-eigenen (commandeer) · es cooptar (elect as a fellow member) · ru поглоти́ть (absorb or assimilate) · pl wchłaniać (absorb or assimilate) · ro cooptare (elect as a fellow member) · pl dokooptować (elect as a fellow member) · pl rekwirować (commandeer) · ru принима́ть в соста́в (elect as a fellow member) · pl kooptować (elect as a fellow member) · io kooptar (elect as a fellow member) · es cooptar (commandeer) · ca cooptar (elect as a fellow member) · es arrebatar (commandeer) · pl przejmować (commandeer)