Adaptation or adaption?
adaptation is a noun meaning “The process of adapting something or becoming adapted to a situation…”; adaption is a noun meaning “Alternative form of adaptation”. In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) adaptation is about 19 times as common as adaption.
What is the difference between adaptation and adaption?
| adaptation | adaption | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | noun |
| Meaning | The process of adapting something or becoming adapted to a situation; adjustment, modification A change that is made or undergone to suit a condition or environment | |
| Example | none recorded | none recorded |
| Forms | adaptations | adaptions |
| Pronunciation | /ˌæd.əpˈteɪ.ʃən/ /ˌæd.æpˈteɪ.ʃən/ | /əˈdæpʃən/ |
| In writing | 10 times per million words | about once in every 2 million words |
Sources: adaptation and adaption in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of adaptation and adaption
adaptation
- 1
The process of adapting something or becoming adapted to a situation; adjustment, modification
- 2
A change that is made or undergone to suit a condition or environment
- 3
The process of replacing a given morpheme of a source lexeme with an equivalent morpheme of the target lexeme, especially where the two morphemes are cognates
- 4
The process of change that an organism undergoes to be better suited to its environment
- 5
An instance of an organism undergoing change, or the structure or behavior that is changed
- 6
The process of adapting an artistic work from a different medium
- 7
An artistic work that has been adapted from a different medium
- 8
The means by which social groups adapt to different social and physical environments
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, adaptation or adaption?
adaptation appears 10 times per million words; adaption about once in every 2 million words.
adaptation 10 times per million wordsadaption about once in every 2 million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search adaptation vs adaption?
“adaptation vs adaption” is searched about 1,600 times a month on Google and 20 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“adaption vs adaptation”, “adaptation or adaption”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.