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The power of choosing; the right of choice or election; an alternative. There is an option left to the United States of America, whether they will be respectable and prosperous, or contemptible and miserable, as a nation. Washington.

Involving an option; depending on the exercise of an option; left to one's discretion or choice; not compulsory; as, optional studies; it is optional with you to go or stay. -- n.

In an optional manner.

Admission to a more intimate relation; reception; as, the adoption of persons into hospitals or monasteries, or of one society into another.

One of a sect which maintained that Christ was the Son of God not by nature but by adoption.

Right of first choice.

f a committee. [This makes it the property of the body, and the question is then on its adoption.] To accept a bill (Law), to agree (on the part of the drawee) to pay it when due. -- To accept service (Law), to agree that a writ or process shall be considered as regularly served, when it has not been. -- To accept th…

Taken by adoption; taken up as one's own; as, an adopted son, citizen, country, word. -- A*dopt"ed*ly, adv.

Pertaining to adoption; made or acquired by adoption; fitted to adopt; as, an adoptive father, an child; an adoptive language. -- A*dopt"ive*ly, adv.

A kind of adoption in ancient Rome. See Arrogation.

Adoption; association or reception as a member in or of the same family or society.

Examination or consideration of a subject in controversy, or of a plan proposed for adoption; earnest discussion; debate. A logical agitation of the matter. L'Estrange. The project now in agitation. Swift.

osed to a federative government; -- applied particularly to the party which opposed the adoption of the constitution of the United States. Pickering.

Adoption of a person of full age.

The power or opportunity of choosing; option. Choice there is not, unless the thing which we take be so in our power that we might have refused it. Hooker.

The profession of faith in Christ by baptism; hence, the Christian religion, or the adoption of it. [Obs.] Shak.

new base line in laying out township in the government lands of the United States. The adoption at certain intervals of a correction line is necessitated by the convergence of of meridians, and the statute requirement that the townships must be squares. -- House of correction, a house where disorderly persons are con…

rty to any pleading of the ground taken by him in his last antecedent pleading, and the adoption of another. Bouvier.

In an American college, an optional study or course of study. [Colloq.]

The uniting or allying one's self with anything; maintenance; adoption; as, the espousal of a quarrel. The open espousal of his cause. Lord Orford.