See benign neglect on Wiktionary
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"etymology_text": "Reportedly coined in 1969 by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, adviser to US President Richard Nixon, who recommended this policy with respect to the issue of US racial strife.",
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"ref": "1971 February 22, Karsten Prager, “The Cooling Of America: Right On Toward a New Black Pluralism”, in TIME, archived from the original on 24 Jan 2025, retrieved 16 Jul 2014:",
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"ref": "2003 May 28, Larry Elliott, Charlotte Denny, “Strong euro causes weak smiles among Europe's policy gurus”, in The Guardian, UK, archived from the original on 05 Mar 2016, retrieved 16 Jul 2014:",
"text": "[T]he Japanese have been intervening to hold down the value of the yen, while Washington has been adopting a policy of benign neglect towards the dollar.",
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"ref": "2008 August 6, Ann Lovejoy, “Gardening: Camp can be a ball for houseplants”, in Seattle Post-Intelligencer, archived from the original on 26 Nov 2025, retrieved 16 Jul 2014:",
"text": "I deliberately choose houseplants that thrive on benign neglect.",
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"ref": "2014 April 19, Mark Oppenheimer, “Let Them Drink Chocolate”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 16 Jun 2022, retrieved 16 Jul 2014:",
"text": "As a parent, I think that it’s time to declare a period of benign neglect when it comes to food.",
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"A policy or strategy of deliberately taking no action concerning an issue, challenging situation, or other problem in the belief that this course will ultimately result in the best outcome possible."
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"qualifier": "set phrase; often politics or public policy; set phrase; often politics or public policy",
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"(set phrase, often politics or public policy) A policy or strategy of deliberately taking no action concerning an issue, challenging situation, or other problem in the belief that this course will ultimately result in the best outcome possible."
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"word": "benign neglect"
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"ref": "1971 February 22, Karsten Prager, “The Cooling Of America: Right On Toward a New Black Pluralism”, in TIME, archived from the original on 24 Jan 2025, retrieved 16 Jul 2014:",
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"ref": "2008 August 6, Ann Lovejoy, “Gardening: Camp can be a ball for houseplants”, in Seattle Post-Intelligencer, archived from the original on 26 Nov 2025, retrieved 16 Jul 2014:",
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"ref": "2014 April 19, Mark Oppenheimer, “Let Them Drink Chocolate”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 16 Jun 2022, retrieved 16 Jul 2014:",
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"(set phrase, often politics or public policy) A policy or strategy of deliberately taking no action concerning an issue, challenging situation, or other problem in the belief that this course will ultimately result in the best outcome possible."
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"word": "benign neglect"
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Download raw JSONL data for benign neglect meaning in All languages combined (3.1kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-03-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-03-03 using wiktextract (05c257f and 9d9a410). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.