denotes a person or thing adopted by another.

Adoptive children, among the Romans, were on the same footing with natural ones; and accordingly were either to be instituted heirs, or expressly disinherited, otherwise the testament was null. The emperor Adrian preferred adoptive children to natural ones; because we choose the former, but are obliged to take the latter at random.

M. Menage has published a book of cloges, or verses addressed to him; which he calls Liber Adoptivus, an adoptive book; and adds it to his other works.—Heinius, and Furstenburg of Munster, have likewise published adoptive books.

In ecclesiastical writers we find adoptive women, or sisters, (adoptiva feminae or sorores), used for those handmaids of the ancient clergy, otherwise called sub-introducer.

Adoptive arms, are those which a person enjoys by the gift or concession of another, and to which he was not otherwise entitled. They stand contradistinguished from arms of alliance.

We sometimes meet with adoptive heir, by way of opposition to natural heir; and adoptive gods, by way of contradistinction to domestic ones. The Romans, notwithstanding the number of their domestic, had their adoptive gods, taken chiefly from the Egyptians: such were Isis, Osiris, Anubis, Apis, Harpocrates, and Canopus.