opportunist
Americannoun
noun
adjective
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of opportunist
First recorded in 1865–70; opportun(ism) ( def. ) + -ist ( def. )
Explanation
Opportunists are people who see a chance to gain some advantage from a situation, often at the expense of ethics or morals. An opportunist seizes every opportunity to improve things for himself. Say you won millions in the lottery. People would come out of the woodwork hoping to get their hands on some of it. These people act as if they are close friends. But they are not; they are opportunists. Famous opportunists include “carpetbaggers,” Northern opportunists who, after the American Civil War, poured into the South to turn Reconstruction into personal financial gains.
Vocabulary lists containing opportunist
100 SAT words Beginning with "O"
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Vocabulary Video Contest (2013) - List 1
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The Underground Railroad
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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.
The first season of the new podcast The Opportunist is unsettling, to say the least.
From Slate • Apr. 10, 2021
The Opportunist details the ways that the internet can allow desperate people to find comfort in a community in which people reinforce one another’s bizarre beliefs.
From Slate • Apr. 10, 2021
The practical radical Gambetta eventually came to captain a political grouping that called itself Opportunist Republicans.
From The New Yorker • Dec. 15, 2014
Opportunist tries from Darrell Goulding and Iafeta Paleaaesina helped establish a 14-0 half-time lead that Pat Richards extended with the fourth of his five goals early in the second half.
From The Guardian • Apr. 2, 2010
Coming from an Opportunist Chamber of Deputies, such a decision would have appeared admirable, but the Commune doomed her own revolutionary principles when she failed to put them into practice.
From The Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz
Definitions 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.
