Rescue vs. Adopt — What's the Difference?

Rescue comprises responsive operations that usually involve the saving of life, or the urgent treatment of injuries after an accident or a dangerous situation. Tools used might include search and rescue dogs, mounted search and rescue horses, helicopters, the "jaws of life", and other hydraulic cutting and spreading tools used to extricate individuals from wrecked vehicles.

Legally take (another's child) and bring it up as one's own

To cause to be free from danger, imprisonment, or difficulty; save.

Choose to take up or follow (an idea, method, or course of action)

To save from any violence, danger or evil.

Take on or assume (an attitude or position)

To free or liberate from confinement or other physical restraint.

(of a local authority) accept responsibility for the maintenance of (a road).

To recover forcibly.

To take on the legal responsibilities as parent of (a child that is not one's biological child).

To deliver by arms, notably from a siege.

To become the owner or caretaker of (a pet, especially one from a shelter).

(figuratively) To remove or withdraw from a state of exposure to evil and sin.

To take and follow (a course of action, for example) by choice or assent

(figuratively) To achieve something positive under difficult conditions.

To take up and make one's own

An act or episode of rescuing, saving.

To move to or resettle in (a place).

A liberation, freeing.

To take on or assume

The forcible ending of a siege; liberation from similar military peril

To vote to accept

A special airliner flight to bring home passengers who are stranded

To choose as standard or required in a course

A rescuee.

To take (a child, heir, friend, citizen, etc.) by choice into a relationship.

To free or deliver from any confinement, violence, danger, or evil; to liberate from actual restraint; to remove or withdraw from a state of exposure to evil; as, to rescue a prisoner from the enemy; to rescue seamen from destruction.

To take voluntarily (a child of other parents) to be in the place of, or as, one's own child.

The act of rescuing; deliverance from restraint, violence, or danger; liberation.

To obtain (a pet) from a shelter or the wild.

The forcible retaking, or taking away, against law, of things lawfully distrained.

To take by choice into the scope of one's responsibility.

Recovery or preservation from loss or danger;

To take or receive as one's own what is not so naturally.

Free from harm or evil

To select and take or approve.

Take forcibly from legal custody;

To beat an opponent ten times in a row.

To take by choice into relationship, as, child, heir, friend, citizen, etc.; esp. to take voluntarily (a child of other parents) to be in the place of, or as, one's own child.

To take or receive as one's own what is not so naturally; to select and take or approve; as, to adopt the view or policy of another; these resolutions were adopted.

Choose and follow; as of theories, ideas, policies, strategies or plans;

Take up and practice as one's own

Take on titles, offices, duties, responsibilities;

Take on a certain form, attribute, or aspect;

Take into one's family;

Put into dramatic form;

Take up the cause, ideology, practice, method, of someone and use it as one's own;