Word.ws English Dictionary

exaptations

exaptations is the plural of exaptation.

Meaning of exaptation

Noun

exaptation (countable and uncountable, plural exaptations)

  1. (evolutionary theory) The use of a biological structure or function for a purpose other than that for which it initially evolved.
    • Birds initially developed wings and feathers as a means of heat regulation. The use of wings for flight is an example of exaptation.
  2. (broadly) The promotion of meaningless or redundant material so that it does new grammatical (morphosyntactic or phonological) or semantic work.
    • 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).2017, Eric Haeberli, Review of Ledgeway & Roberts (eds.) (2017), Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax, Journal of Historical Syntax, Volume 3, Article 4, 2019, PDF edition page 2

Questions about exaptations

What is exaptations the plural of?
Exaptations is the plural of exaptation.

Words near exaptations in the dictionary

  1. exapophysis
  2. exaprolol
  3. exapt
  4. exaptation
  5. exaptational
  6. exaptations
  7. exaptative
  8. exapted
  9. exapting
  10. exaptive
  11. exapts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: exaptations (page history and authors); exaptation (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “exaptations.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/exaptations. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.