Advantage, n.
Etymology: [OE. avantage, avauntage, F. avantage, fr. avant before. See Advance, and cf. Vantage.]
1. Any condition, circumstance, opportunity, or means, particularly favorable to success, or to any desired end; benefit; as, the enemy had the advantage of a more elevated position. Give me advantage of some brief discourse. Shak. The advantages of a close alliance. Macaulay.
2. Superiority; mastery; -- with of or over. Lest Satan should get an advantage of us. 2 Cor. ii. 11.
3. Superiority of state, or that which gives it; benefit; gain; profit; as, the advantage of a good constitution.
4. Interest of money; increase; overplus (as the thirteenth in the baker's dozen). [Obs.] And with advantage means to pay thy love. Shak. Advantage ground, vantage ground. [R.] Clarendon. -- To have the advantage of (any one), to have a personal knowledge of one who does not have a reciprocal knowledge. "You have the advantage of me; I don't remember ever to have had the honor." Sheridan. -- To take advantage of, to profit by; (often used in a bad sense) to overreach, to outwit.
1 more senses
Syn. -- Advantage, Advantageous, Benefit, Beneficial. We speak of a thing as a benefit, or as beneficial, when it is simply productive of good; as, the benefits of early discipline; the beneficial effects of adversity. We speak of a thing as an advantage, or as advantageous, when it affords us the means of getting forward, and places us on a "vantage ground" for further effort. Hence, there is a difference between the benefits and the advantages of early education; between a beneficial and an advantageous investment of money.
1 other Webster entry under this spelling
Advantage, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Advantaged; p. pr. & vb. n. Advantaging.]
To give an advantage to; to further; to promote; to benefit; to profit. The truth is, the archbishop's own stiffness and averseness to comply with the court designs, advantaged his adversaries against him. Fuller. What is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away Luke ix. 25. To advantage one's self of, to avail one's self of. [Obs.]
Shades of meaning
Fernald has no entry of its own for advantage; he lists it under profit, utility, victory.
Where he writes about it:
Advantage is that which gives one a vantage-ground, either for coping with competitors or with difficulties, needs, or demands; as to have the advantage of a good education; it is frequently used of what one has beyond another or secures at the expense of another; as, to have the advantage of another in an argument, or to take advantage of another in a bargain. — from profit
Expediency has respect to profit or advantage, real or supposed, considered apart from or perhaps in opposition to right, in actions having a moral character. — from profit
Expediency (L. ex, out, and pes, foot; literally, the getting the foot out) refers primarily to escape from or avoidance of some difficulty or trouble; either expediency or utility may be used to signify profit or advantage considered apart from right as the ground of moral obligation, or of actions that have a moral character, expediency denoting immediate advantage on a contracted view, and especially with reference to avoiding danger, difficulty, or loss, while utility may be so broadened as to cover all existence through all time, as in the utilitarian theory of morals. — from utility
In the latter sense any hard-won achievement, advantage, or success may be termed a victory. — from victory