opportunistic
/ɒpətjuːˈnɪstɪk
/adjective
1Exploiting immediate opportunities, especially regardless of planning or principle: an opportunistic political lightweight...
- I personally was encouraged from an early age to regard your country as opportunistic at minimum, greedy at best, and the worst bully in the playground at worst.
- We have lashed out at those we fear and allowed ourselves to be manipulated by opportunistic and exploitative politicians.
- I think he took an opportunistic political move in the area.
1.1 Ecology (Of a plant or animal) able to spread quickly in a previously unexploited habitat: opportunistic populations colonizing new substrates...
- These disruptions have allowed opportunistic creatures to move in.
- In addition, the extra carbon dioxide increases plant growth - particularly for opportunistic species that thrive in cities, such as ragweed.
- The majority of species are opportunistic, preying upon anything they can overpower that comes within striking distance.
1.2 Medicine (Of a microorganism or an infection caused by it) affecting patients only or chiefly when the immune system is depressed.Tuberculosis is the most frequent opportunistic infection amongst these patients with moderate to advanced immunosuppression....
- Of the 43 patients with an opportunistic infection, 36 had a predominance of nodules smaller than 1 cm in diameter.
- In advanced HIV infection, the presence of many opportunistic infections affecting the lungs may cause difficulties in the diagnosis of TB.
Derivatives
opportunistically
/ adverb ...- The question now, therefore, is whether this can be turned to advantage by strengthening the bill in committee, or whether it will simply be used to change the bill opportunistically in order to inflict defeats on the government.
- The back cover of Dancing with de Beauvoir claims, rather opportunistically, that it is ‘a book for anyone who has ever fallen in love with France and wondered why’.
- However, as opportunistically as St Brendan's took their three goals it was their inability to string any real sort of scoring run together that was their ultimate undoing.