What does Polymorphism refer to in OOP?

• A. The ability of derived classes to share functionality with base classes but still have their own behaviors.
• B. A type of dictionary data structure.
• C. A database property.
• D. A network protocol.

Answer: (A)

Polymorphism means treating objects through a common interface while allowing each object to respond in its own way. The option describes derived classes sharing functionality with a base class but still having their own behaviors, which is at the heart of polymorphism: you reuse base behavior and let subclasses override or extend it to provide specialized behavior. This is typically realized through method overriding and dynamic dispatch, so when you call a method on a base-type reference, the actual subclass’s version runs. For example, a base class might define draw(), and each subclass overrides it to render a different shape; calling draw() on a collection of Shapes will produce the correct behavior for each concrete shape. The other choices refer to concepts outside object-oriented programming (a dictionary is a data structure, a database property, a network protocol), so they don’t describe polymorphism.