take occasion

English

take occasion (third-person singular simple present takes occasion, present participle taking occasion, simple past took occasion, past participle taken occasion)

(dated, idiomatic) To take advantage of an opportunity.
- 1724, Daniel Defoe, Roxana: The Fortunate Mistress:
  He grew old and fretful, and captious, and I must add, which made the vice itself begin to grow surfeiting and nauseous to me, he grew worse and wickeder the older he grew, and that to such degree as is not fit to write of, and made me so weary of him that upon one of his capricious humours, which he often took occasion to trouble me with, I took occasion to be much less complaisant to him than I used to be; […]
- 1665 November 17 (date written; Gregorian calendar), Samuel Pepys, Mynors Bright, transcriber, “November 7th, 1665”, in Henry B[enjamin] Wheatley, editor, The Diary of Samuel Pepys […], volume V, London: George Bell & Sons […]; Cambridge: Deighton Bell & Co., published 1895, →OCLC:
  Home to dinner, and there I took occasion, from the blacknesse of the meat as it came out of the pot, to fall out with my wife and my maid for their sluttery […]