opportunism
"opportunism" is a 11-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“opportunism” is uncommon English (frequency #50,707 among 15,494 “O” headwords), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- #50,707
- frequency rank, English
- 15,494
- “O” headwords
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed May 6, 2026) - The practice of taking advantage of any situations or people to achieve an end, often with no regard for principles or consequences.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | opportunism |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 11 |
| Frequency rank | #50,707 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Where “opportunism” sits in English frequency
Rare enough to double-check
opportunism is uncommon English at frequency #50,707 among 15,494 “O” headwords, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 2 senses are on record.
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for opportunism, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which usually means its spelling is distinct enough that readers don't reach for a similar-looking word instead.
Etymologically, the entry records: From French opportunisme, equivalent to opportune + -ism. The correct English form is opportunism, spelled O-P-P-O-R-T-U-N-I-S-M.
Definition
- 1The practice of taking advantage of any situations or people to achieve an end, often with no regard for principles or consequences.
- 2The political line of Communist Party members who zealously support the Party, but whose trait is that they yield to the mood of the moment, they are unable to resist what is fashionable, leading to the sacrifice of the permanent and essential interests of the Party to the momentary and minor interests.
Etymology
From French opportunisme, equivalent to opportune + -ism.
This word in other languages
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 English corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Using “opportunism”
The practical upshot for anyone who landed here from a spell-check.
- The one correct English spelling is O-P-P-O-R-T-U-N-I-S-M - every other letter order is a misspelling in standard orthography.
- Browse more English words and confusable pairs in the same reference. English words
Other uncommon English words near this rank
Data Source
Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.