Someone's adoptive family is the family that adopted them.
He was brought up by adoptive parents in London.
...her adoptive mother.
2. adjective [ADJECTIVE noun]
Someone's adoptive country or city is the one that they choose for their home, although they were not born there.
They threatened to expel him from his adoptive country.
Galway in Ireland is my adoptive home.
adoptive in British English
(əˈdɒptɪv)
adjective
1.
acquired or related by adoption
an adoptive father
2.
of or relating to adoption
Compare adopted
adoptive in American English
(əˈdɑptɪv)
adjective
1.
having to do with adoption
2.
having become so by the act of adoption
adoptive parents
Derived forms
adoptively (aˈdoptively)
adverb
Word origin
L adoptivus
Examples of 'adoptive' in a sentence
adoptive
Part of this we can attribute to the fact that his adoptive country voted to leave the European Union a few weeks earlier.
Times, Sunday Times (2016)
Relations with his adoptive father were fraught.
Times, Sunday Times (2013)
Would my birth mother have been as good a mother as my adoptive one?
Times, Sunday Times (2013)
His heartless adoptive mother ended up estranged from her family.
The Times Literary Supplement (2011)
Her adoptive mother had a circle of friends who worked in charities or at the university.
Times, Sunday Times (2015)
He now regards them as his unofficial adoptive brother and mother.
Times, Sunday Times (2015)
She tells me her father concluded she had a problem with intimacy because of the behaviour of her adoptive family.
Times, Sunday Times (2010)
Here, three single men recount how they became adoptive fathers.
Times, Sunday Times (2007)
Her adoptive father was an academic who had taught in Jamaica.
Times, Sunday Times (2012)
He acquired his love of horses and dogs from his adoptive mother, who adored animals.
Times, Sunday Times (2014)
Despite having a very happy childhood with a loving adoptive family, the still unanswered questions about her biological family nagged at the back of her mind.
The Sun (2014)
In other languages
adoptive
British English: adoptive ADJECTIVE
Someone's adoptive family is the family that adopted them.