opportunity cost

The cost of choosing one course of action over another. Letting your second best option pass.
Economists tend to measure opportunity cost in terms of money for simplicity's sake. However value isn't always monetary.

At the restaurant, you are presented with a desert menu. Assuming that you only eat one desert, you have the choice between chocolate mouse, ice cream and honey crepes. Let's say you prefer ice cream to chocolate mouse, but honey crepes are your favorite. If you eat a honey crepe, ice cream (which would have chosen had you not had crepes) is your opportunity cost.

Another example would be if two women that you fancied, Sarah and Alice, asked you out and you said yes to Sarah (assuming monogamy), going out with Alice is your opportunity cost.

by anthonylebrun November 3, 2008

opportunitize

(verb) to take advantage of your opportunites

I found out that my manager got fired from my company so I opportunitized and applied to take his position.

by bablas June 12, 2012

pursue other opportunities

To be fired or forced out of a job due to failure or scandal. The "opportunities" to be "pursued" may include crying, applying for unemployment, eating cheetos, and watching daytime talk tv. A close analogue, usually used in politics or sports, is the departure "to spend time with his family."

In the wake of its failure to meet earnings targets, the company announced that its chief financial officer would be leaving to pursue other opportunities and the company was planning to focus on its core competencies.

by smythy September 15, 2009

opportunity crime

Crime comitted on impulse during brief period of opportuntiy

A car boot is left open and some one steals an item from the inside of it. For example this could be a box of chocolates or your grandma. This would be classed as an opportunity crime.

by Jacob Mir July 7, 2006

little opportunities

A phrase coined by Octomom, Nadya Suleman, to put a positive spin on how she financially provides for fourteen children without working. Little opportunities are generated by pimping one's own children out to the media.

Q - Hey, dude. Why are there so many cameramen on the beach today?
A - Cause the Octomom is taking advantage of one of her "little opportunities" by pretending she actually takes her brood of fourteen to the beach on a regular basis for some good old-fashioned family fun.
Q - Ah! So, she's pimping those poor kids out again.

by TsuDho November 30, 2009

From Amazing Grace to A Floating Opportunity

An old Southern term an African-American mother uses to describe an long and sometimes well deserved, ass-whooping in order to warn her child, or others who cross her. This African-American saying, used as a motherly warning, first popped up in the 1930 play Mule Bone by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.

“You’d better behave, or I’ll knock you from amazing grace to a floating opportunity!”

by ajcub225 June 7, 2019

opportunivore

An individual who seeks food in any situation where no exchange of capital is needed, e.g., dumpster diving or crashing a wedding buffet

As an opportunivore, Lance preferred sponging off of friends rather than braving the cold, wet dumpsters.

by Dr. Octopus December 18, 2002