Word.ws English Dictionary

take advantage

take advantage verb: to profit from a situation deliberately.

Verb

take advantage (third-person singular simple present takes advantage, present participle taking advantage, simple past took advantage, past participle taken advantage)

  1. (intransitive) To profit from a situation deliberately.
    • She took advantage of the economic crisis to exchange some money.
    • The trip to Carrow Road was a chance for Harry Redknapp's side to take advantage after their two closest London rivals and leaders Manchester City failed to take maximum points from Premier League clashes in the last two days.2011 December 27, Mike Henson, “Norwich 0-2 Tottenham”, in BBC Sport
  2. To make use of something.
    • Nonetheless, some insect prey take advantage of clutter by hiding in it. Earless ghost swift moths become “invisible” to echolocating bats by forming mating clusters close (less than half a meter) above vegetation and effectively blending into the clutter of echoes that the bat receives from the...2013 May-June, William E. Conner, “An Acoustic Arms Race”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, pages 206–7

Forms of take advantage

third-person singular presenttakes advantage
present participletaking advantage
pasttook advantage
past participletaken advantage

Questions about take advantage

What does take advantage mean?
Take advantage means to profit from a situation deliberately.
What part of speech is take advantage?
Take advantage is a verb.
What is the past tense of take advantage?
The past tense of take advantage is took advantage.

Words near take advantage in the dictionary

  1. take a wrong turn at Albuquerque
  2. take aback
  3. take account of
  4. take across
  5. take action
  6. take advantage
  7. take advantage of
  8. take after
  9. take against
  10. take aim
  11. take air

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: take advantage (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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