ACCOMMODATION, in theology has two chief meanings. (1) It is used to describe the method of adapting the presenta tion of truth to the learners' capacity. In a sense all revelation of God must be "accommodated" to man: the naked revelation would be so dazzling as to blind him. When Jesus withheld cer tain truths from the disciples because they could not yet bear them (John xvi. 12) he was practising accommodation. Teaching by symbol or parable, too, is accommodation. (2) When words used with a definite reference to one subject are applied to another subject we have accommodation in a more special sense. Thus Matthew ii. 15 states that Jesus was taken to Egypt that the word of the prophet, "Out of Egypt did I call my son," might be fulfilled: but the prophecy quoted, Hosea xi. 1, quite clearly means Israel by "my son." In biology accommodation is used to describe adjustments achieved by an individual organism over and above those which it makes as part of its inheritance. In psychology it means "the process by which habit is modified, cancelled and added to" (J. M. Baldwin). For accommodation in optics see OPTICS.