seize the opportunity

seize the opportunity (third-person singular simple present seizes the opportunity, present participle seizing the opportunity, simple past and past participle seized the opportunity)

1. (idiomatic) To immediately seize a particular opportunity.

   Synonyms: jump at the chance, jump at the opportunity

   • 1834–1874, George Bancroft, History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent, volume (please specify |volume=I to X), Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company [et al.], →OCLC:

     Grenville seized the opportunity to declaim on the repeal of the stamp act.

   • 1874, David Livingstone, chapter 7, in The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa, from 1865 to his death‎^[1], volume I, London: John Murray, page 159:

     The “lazies” of the party seized the opportunity of remaining behind—wandering, as they said, though all the cross paths were marked.

   • 1884, Miriam S. Knight, The Poison Tree‎^[2]:

     At length the daughters of respectable people feared to walk along the roads or on the gháts. If one was seen alone, the devoted Hindustani Durwans followed, calling out "Ma Thakurani," and, preventing them from bathing, brought a palki. Many of those who were not accustomed to travel in a palki seized the opportunity of doing so free of expense.

   • 1887, Harriet W. Daly, Digging, Squatting, and Pioneering Life in the Northern Territory of South Australia, page 34:

     The little girls appeared, looking fresh and cool in pretty pink cottons, and we two elder ones seized the opportunity of making a more elaborate toilette than usual.

   • 1898, Jason E. Hammond, “Work and Reward” in Suggestive Programs for Special Day Exercises, Lansing, Michigan: Department of Public Instruction for District Schools, p. ,^[3]
   • 1905, Livy, translated by Canon Roberts, From the Founding of the City, Book 38:

     Two days were thus wasted in the quarrel between the consuls. It was clear that while Faminius was present no decision could be arrived at. Owing to Flaminius' absence through illness, Aemilius seized the opportunity to move a resolution which the senate adopted. Its purport was that the Ambracians should have all their property restored to them; they should be free to live under their own laws; they should impose such harbour dues and other imposts by land and sea as they desired, provided that the Romans and their Italian allies were exempt.

   • 2012 July 15, Richard Williams, “Tour de France 2012: Carpet tacks cannot force Bradley Wiggins off track”, in Guardian Unlimited‎^[4]:

     There was the sternness of an old-fashioned Tour patron in his rebuke to the young Frenchman Pierre Rolland, the only one to ride away from the peloton and seize the opportunity for a lone attack before being absorbed back into the bunch, where he was received with coolness.

   • 2022 January 25, Eric Reinhardt, “How Joe Biden Launched a New Prison Boom”, in Slate‎^[5]:

     During an ongoing pandemic conjoined with an intensifying operational crisis inside U.S. prisons, mass clemency should be the first step of many toward a decarceral agenda that could still––if he’s bold enough to seize the opportunity––define Biden’s presidency.