seize on/upon

phrasal verb

seized on/upon; seizing on/upon; seizes on/upon

: to take or use (something, such as a chance or opportunity) in a quick and eager way

His critics have seized on the scandal to call for his resignation.

She seized on the opportunity to tell her side of the story.

Examples of seize on/upon in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Decades later, Biden’s adversaries have been quick to seize on Hunter’s struggles to bombard him with hard-hitting political attacks that depict his whole family as corrupt. —Matt Viser, Washington Post, 12 June 2024

Yet those are nuances in a picture of human variation—which is both what biological anthropologists study and what racists seize on. —Bymichael Price, science.org, 29 Mar. 2024

Gomes, who ran in the general election as an Independent Party candidate, attempted to seize on the election scandal as part of his campaign to oust Ganim, who returned to office in 2015 after serving seven years in prison on federal corruption charges. —Andrew Brown, Hartford Courant, 28 Feb. 2024

The main opposition candidate, Gálvez, a tech entrepreneur and former senator, tried to seize on Mexicans’ concerns about security and promised to take a more aggressive approach toward organized crime. —Sasha Rogelberg, Fortune, 3 June 2024