option
/ˈɒpʃ(ə)n
/noun
1A thing that is or may be chosen: choose the cheapest options for supplying energy...
- Most of the time will be spent on the chosen option but each participant will get some experience of the other areas.
- Mr Daley says apart from the high costs involved, the layout of the building meant the work, which would include widening corridors, was not a practical option.
- A grape vine needs five years to come into commercial production, so leasing is not a practical option.
Synonyms
choice, alternative, recourse, possibility, course of action;
freedom of choice, power to choose, right to choose
informal bet
1.1 [in singular] The freedom or right to choose something: she was given the option of resigning or being dismissed he has no option but to pay up...
- The drivers were given the option of taking a route of their own choice between Grafton and the Gold Coast.
- When people were given the option of not having their name listed, many demurred, and the list became incomplete and not very useful.
- I have asked many married couples I know whether they would, if given the option, trade in their marriages for a civil union.
1.2A right to buy or sell a particular thing at a specified price within a set time: Columbia Pictures has an option on the script...
- This relief does not apply if the shareholders in the target company retain an option to sell their shares to another company.
- In technical terms, the new chief executive is entitled to be granted an option to buy ordinary shares.
- This involves buying and selling futures or options on shares, bonds or currencies.
verb [with object]
Buy or sell an option on: his second script will have been optioned by the time you read this...
- Their books are selling overseas, being optioned for movies and TV shows.
- Wendy Morton may be a poet, but she should considering optioning her life story.
- Hirsh has optioned William Weintraub's City Unique: Montreal Days and Nights in the 1940s and '50s.
Phrases
keep (or leave) one's options open
not be an option
Origin
Mid 16th century: from French, or from Latin optio(n-), from the stem of optare 'choose'. The verb dates from the 1930s.
This goes back to Latin optare ‘choose’. Keep your options open is only recorded from the 1960s. You choose a specific child to adopt (Late Middle English) and this comes from the related word adopatare ‘choose for yourself’.