advantage
Americannoun
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advantages
plural
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any state, circumstance, opportunity, or means specially favorable to success, interest, or any desired end.
the advantage of a good education.
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benefit; gain; profit.
It will be to his advantage to learn Chinese before going to China.
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superiority or ascendancy (often followed by over orof ).
His height gave him an advantage over his opponent.
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a position of superiority (often followed by over orof ).
their advantage in experienced players.
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Tennis. the first point scored after deuce.
verb (used with object)
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advantages,
present (3rd person singular)
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advantaged,
past participle, past
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advantaging
present participle
idioms
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to advantage, to good effect; advantageously.
The paintings were arranged to advantage on one wall.
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have the advantage of, to be in a superior or advantageous position; possess an advantage over.
By virtue of independent wealth, he has the advantage of his opponents.
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take advantage of,
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to make use of for gain.
to take advantage of an opportunity.
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to impose upon, especially unfairly, as by exploiting a weakness.
to take advantage of someone.
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noun
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superior or more favourable position or power
he had an advantage over me because of his experience
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benefit or profit (esp in the phrase to one's advantage )
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tennis
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the point scored after deuce
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the resulting state of the score
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-
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to make good use of
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to impose upon the weakness, good nature, etc, of; abuse
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to seduce
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to good effect
he used his height to advantage at the game
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you know me but I do not know you
Usage
What are other ways to say advantage? An advantage is something that positions one well for accomplishing something. How is advantage different from benefit and profit? Find out on Thesaurus.com.
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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advantagesimple
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advantagessimple
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have advantagedperfect
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has advantagedperfect
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am advantagingprogressive
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are advantagingprogressive
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is advantagingprogressive
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have been advantagingperfect progressive
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has been advantagingperfect progressive
Past
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advantagedsimple
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had advantagedperfect
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was advantagingprogressive
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were advantagingprogressive
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had been advantagingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of advantage
First recorded in 1300–50; Middle English ava(u)ntage, from Anglo-French, Old French avantage, equivalent to avant “before” + -age noun suffix; see origin at advance, -age
Explanation
An advantage is like a head start in a race; it's that thing that gives you a better chance. The noun advantage also refers to a reward or benefit of some action or event. Being sick with the flu had the advantage of kick-starting your diet because you didn't feel like eating much. If you leverage the benefits, you are taking advantage of the situation. If you go on a business trip to Hawaii, you could take advantage of the opportunity and spend an extra day or two on vacation.
Vocabulary lists containing advantage
Academic Vocabulary Toolkit 1, Words 1-10
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"Harrison Bergeron"
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"Rikki-Tikki-Tavi" by Rudyard Kipling
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Security experts have warned for years that companies will face a brutal reckoning once artificial intelligence hands hackers a lopsided advantage over corporate defenders.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2026
Whether that advantage translates into better long-term cardiovascular outcomes remains an important question for future research.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 6, 2026
Countering Kansas City’s home-field advantage is Angel City’s 10-game unbeaten streak, longest in the league, and its 8-3-4 road record, fourth-best in NWSL.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 6, 2026
My mum never took advantage of Right to Buy; she continues to rent a council flat on a small estate in south London.
From BBC ● Nov. 6, 2026
He would trade Lincoln for Confederate prisoners of war, or attempt to use his captive as leverage to give the South an advantage in peace negotiations.
From "Chasing Lincoln's Killer" by James L. Swanson
“We have the assets and competitive advantages to succeed and are moving with urgency to deliver more value for our customers and stronger results for our investors,” Winfrey said.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 6, 2026
Potentially greater gas-turbine availability remains the bigger longer-term risk to Bloom’s advantages, they said.
From MarketWatch ● Nov. 5, 2026
One of the technology's biggest advantages is that refineries would not necessarily need to replace their existing equipment to use it.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 5, 2026
Redick praised Grimes’ ability to keep advantages by driving decisively.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 3, 2026
Our archaeologist might have considered the possible advantages of a head start.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
“This suggests a new phenomenon, with the biggest factor in the overall drop in scores being advantaged students who are performing below what one would expect given their background,” said Schleicher.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 8, 2026
Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said current tests and assessments in schools "set many students up to fail, overwhelmingly those from less advantaged backgrounds".
From BBC ● Jul. 14, 2026
Counterintuitively, Ross said, smaller independent grocers are actually advantaged in the short term, as smaller stores tend to play in more localized markets than their major chain competitors.
From Salon ● Apr. 24, 2026
Amid a rebalancing of supply and demand for liquidity in the private BDC space, listed BDCs, which benefit from permanent capital and daily liquidity, “are structurally advantaged and can emerge as net winners,” KBW wrote.
From Barron's ● Apr. 7, 2026
We lived well, our days were mostly sunny, and I know that my parents were stoically undeceived by the objectively equivocal, contingent nature of the advantaged life they gave me and my siblings.
From "Class Matters" by The New York Times
“We urgently need a smart export-control strategy that applies robust export controls to deny our adversaries access to advanced technology, while advantaging U.S. companies,” McGuire wrote.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 13, 2026
The administration wants to gain visibility into frontier capabilities without slowing American labs and advantaging China.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 9, 2026
Further advantaging them might hamstring the promising open-source A.I. movement—a crucial area of competition—to the point of obsolescence.
From Slate ● Nov. 14, 2023
Smith agreed, pointing out laws advantaging employers at the expense of workers when it came to organizing into early forms of unions.
From The Guardian ● Dec. 14, 2019
Three powers advantaging a Chieftain most Are Peace and Justice and an Armed Host.
From A Celtic Psaltery by Alfred Perceval Graves
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
