See necessary evil on Wiktionary
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"ref": "2025 October 29, Ryan Hall, “Hubble prevents toil and trouble”, in RAIL, number 1047, page 38:",
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"lang_code": "cmn",
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"lang_code": "de",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
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},
{
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"lang_code": "el",
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"neuter"
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"lang_code": "ja",
"roman": "hitsuyōaku",
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"code": "ko",
"lang": "Korean",
"lang_code": "ko",
"roman": "piryoak",
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"code": "bg",
"lang": "Bulgarian",
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"roman": "neobhodimo zlo",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "необходимо зло"
},
{
"code": "cmn",
"lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
"lang_code": "cmn",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
"word": "必要之惡 /必要之恶"
},
{
"code": "cs",
"lang": "Czech",
"lang_code": "cs",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
"tags": [
"neuter"
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"code": "da",
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"lang_code": "da",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
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"lang": "Dutch",
"lang_code": "nl",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
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{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"lang_code": "fi",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
"word": "välttämätön paha"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"lang_code": "fr",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "mal nécessaire"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"lang_code": "fr",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
"tags": [
"masculine"
],
"word": "mal pour un bien"
},
{
"code": "de",
"lang": "German",
"lang_code": "de",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "notwendiges Übel"
},
{
"code": "el",
"lang": "Greek",
"lang_code": "el",
"roman": "anagkaío kakó",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "αναγκαίο κακό"
},
{
"code": "ja",
"lang": "Japanese",
"lang_code": "ja",
"roman": "hitsuyōaku",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
"word": "必要悪"
},
{
"alt": "必要惡",
"code": "ko",
"lang": "Korean",
"lang_code": "ko",
"roman": "piryoak",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
"word": "필요악"
},
{
"code": "nb",
"lang": "Norwegian Bokmål",
"lang_code": "nb",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
"tags": [
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{
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"lang": "Polish",
"lang_code": "pl",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
"word": "zło konieczne"
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{
"code": "pt",
"lang": "Portuguese",
"lang_code": "pt",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
"tags": [
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"word": "mal necessário"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"lang_code": "ru",
"roman": "neobxodimoje zlo",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
"tags": [
"neuter"
],
"word": "необходимое зло"
},
{
"code": "es",
"lang": "Spanish",
"lang_code": "es",
"sense": "unfavorable thing that must be done or accepted",
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],
"word": "necessary evil"
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Download raw JSONL data for necessary evil meaning in All languages combined (6.5kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2026-09-09 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2026-09-02 using wiktextract (ccec6f1 and 4deed51). 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.