exaptation

Meaning

Noun

• The use of a biological structure or function for a purpose other than that for which it initially evolved.
• The promotion of meaningless or redundant material so that it does new grammatical (morphosyntactic or phonological) or semantic work.

Origin

• . Coined 1982 by palaeontologists Stephen Jay Gould and Elisabeth Vrba to avoid the perceived teleological baggage of the existing term preadaptation.