co-opt » co-op
Spotted in the wild:
- Instead of seeing such criticism as an attack against which your assessment efforts must be defended, consider it an opportunity to build a campus culture of assessment. Instead of fighting the critic, try to co-op him or her. (Start Simple: The Value of Simple Assessment Techniques, Bradley E. Cox & E. Rob Stirton May 18, 2005)
- If you want to try co-oping them into islam, then bring to their attention the merits of what once was a beautiful and peaceful religious philosopy, and that today has become transformed into ugly gangs of murderers parading Jewish body parts around Gaza and howling like mad wolves for the blood of the Jews after some ignorant imam stirs them up at Friday prayers. (Deans's World, comment, May 13, 2004)
- Part of the extreme challenge of leadership (especially in volunteer organizations) is dealing effectively with the ‘difficult people’ in the organization. John blithely suggests to either ‘co-op’ them, replace them, or get them to quit. (Amazon.com, customer review, September 8, 2005)
- In other words, Mithra was the latest and greatest in a long line of ever greater gods based on the then current understanding of the physical universe. It is easy to see how the christians of that time co-oped him to be a part of their mythos just as they presently presume the observations of evolutionary science support their superstitious nonsense and in centuries past stole all the good religious stories such as the life of Buddha to be saints of their own misrepresentation. (link)
Analyzed or reported by:
- Bill Findlay (e-mail of September 12, 2005)
The relevant sense of _co-opt_ in this substitution seems to be “win over”, with some elements of “elect as a fellow member of a group” and “take for one’s own use” mixed in. There is a semantic overlap with _co-op_, referring to a group of people who co-operate. For some writers, _co-op_ is apparently the more transparent or familiar term.