achievement implies hard-won success in the face of difficulty or opposition.
her achievements as a chemist
Example Sentences
Noun the fanciful exploits of the giant lumberjack Paul Bunyan once famed as an actor, John Wilkes Booth is now remembered for a single exploit, his assassination of Lincoln Verb He has never fully exploited his talents. Top athletes are able to exploit their opponents' weaknesses. She said the tragedy had been exploited by the media.
Recent Examples on the Web
Noun
This is the same exploit that Apple patched in iOS 15.6.1. Jacob Siegal, BGR, 31 Aug. 2022 These affiliates, in turn, buy their way into a network through internet access brokers (IABs) who advertise complete exploit packages. Davey Winder, Forbes, 13 Aug. 2022 The exploit chain starts with writing a malicious DLL to disk from the sandboxed Adobe Reader renderer process. Dan Goodin, Ars Technica, 27 July 2022 Hence, there's a good chance hackers are using the zero-day exploit to serve up malicious apps through a web page or phishing email. Michael Kan, PCMAG, 17 Aug. 2022 Indeed, crypto security firms share SBF’s hunch that the exploit was not the result of a vulnerability with the Solana blockchain itself. Taylor Locke, Fortune, 3 Aug. 2022 An exploit that hit a user named The_Grim_Sleeper was captured in a video stream posted over the weekend. Dan Goodin, Ars Technica, 24 Jan. 2022 Factors like social inequalities and frayed social safety nets are the fundamental weaknesses of American society, which more specific problems like opioids, metabolic disorders, and COVID exploit. Ed Yong, The Atlantic, 21 July 2022 Once the victim gets to the exploit server, Candiru gathers more information. Dan Goodin, Ars Technica, 21 July 2022
Verb
Regulators and national-security officials have expressed concern about the potential for terrorists to exploit new financial technologies and markets, including NFTs. Ian Talley, WSJ, 4 Sep. 2022 There aren’t any obvious areas for the Ducks to exploit other than a lack of experience for the Bulldogs at certain spots. James Crepea | The Oregonian/oregonlive, oregonlive, 29 Aug. 2022 Industrial equipment that’s 20 years out of date is likely to have significant vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. Ryan Moody, Forbes, 4 Aug. 2022 Analysts search for that kind of pattern-of-life intelligence, any habit the C.I.A. can exploit.New York Times, 2 Aug. 2022 Florizelle Liser said time had come for Africa’s infrastructural workforce to exploit its untapped potential in natural resources. Faustine Ngila, Quartz, 20 July 2022 Second, surveillance system vendors use insecure systems that hackers can exploit. Nir Kshetri, The Conversation, 9 Nov. 2021 Several important efforts, such as those of France and Germany, run the risk of duplication or don’t exploit synergies adequately.Fortune, 2 Sep. 2022 What Amazon does know about is how to snarf up personal data from its customers and exploit it for profit. Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 18 Aug. 2022 See More
Word History
Etymology
Noun
Middle English espleit, expleit, esploit, exploit "furtherance, favorable outcome, outcome (good or bad), undertaking, military expedition, deed of arms," borrowed from Anglo-French espleit, esploit, exploit "carrying out, execution, achievement, course, success, gain," probably noun derivative of espleiter, esploiter "to carry out, achieve, expedite" — more at exploit entry 2
Verb
Middle English espleiten, expleiten, expleten, esploiten "to facilitate, expedite (a journey), fulfill (a need), execute, complete, relate, explain," borrowed from Anglo-French espleiter, esploiter, exploiter "to carry out, achieve, promote, expedite, make use of, use unfairly, progress, succeed, act," probably going back to Vulgar Latin *explicitāre, repetitive derivative of Latin explicāre "to free from folds or creases, unroll, disentangle, spread out, bring into play, exercise" explicate
Note: The Middle English form expleten suggests association with Latin explēre "to fill up, carry to completion, accomplish" (compare expletive entry 2). Latinizing variants with ex- have completely replaced earlier es- in both English and French. Earlier standard etymological dictionaries of French (Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Bloch and Wartburg's Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française) see the noun as the more basic form, going back to *explicitum, allegedly formed from the neuter of the Latin past participle explicitus (see explicit)—though the sense of the noun is active, not passive. Romance outcomes of *explicitāre are mainly restricted to Gallo-Romance (as Old Occitan esplechar "to make use of, execute, accomplish") and Catalan (esplet "harvest," espletar "to harvest"). Note that *explicitāre preserves only the figurative meaning "bring into play, exercise" of the root word explicāre, out of which French and English have elaborated further meanings. The sense "relate, explain" of the Middle English verb is not paralleled in French and did not survive into Modern English.