"make a virtue of necessity" meaning in All languages combined

See make a virtue of necessity on Wiktionary

Verb [English]

Audio: En-au-make a virtue of necessity.ogg Forms: makes a virtue of necessity [present, singular, third-person], making a virtue of necessity [participle, present], made a virtue of necessity [participle, past], made a virtue of necessity [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|make<,,made> a virtue of necessity}} make a virtue of necessity (third-person singular simple present makes a virtue of necessity, present participle making a virtue of necessity, simple past and past participle made a virtue of necessity)
  1. (idiomatic) To make the best of a difficult situation; to recast or portray an action or situation in which one has no alternatives as an action or situation which was deliberately chosen on its merits. Tags: idiomatic Related terms: make the best of a bad bargain, necessity is the mother of invention Translations (to make the best of a difficult situation): z nouze ctnost (Czech), van de nood een deugd maken (Dutch), aus der Not eine Tugend machen (German), κάνω την ανάγκη φιλοτιμία (káno tin anágki filotimía) (Greek), a maga javára fordítja (Hungarian), fare di necessità virtù (Italian), hacer de la necesidad virtud (Spanish)

Inflected forms

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      "form": "makes a virtue of necessity",
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      "form": "making a virtue of necessity",
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    {
      "form": "made a virtue of necessity",
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        {
          "ref": "c. 1590–1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:",
          "text": "Indeed, because you are a banish'd man,\nTherefore, above the rest, we parley to you:\nAre you content to be our general?\nTo make a virtue of necessity\nAnd live, as we do, in this wilderness?",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1906, George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara, Preface:",
          "text": "Nietzsche, as I gather, regarded the slave-morality as having been invented and imposed on the world by slaves making a virtue of necessity and a religion of their servitude.",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
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        "To make the best of a difficult situation; to recast or portray an action or situation in which one has no alternatives as an action or situation which was deliberately chosen on its merits."
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        [
          "situation",
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          "alternative",
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        [
          "deliberately",
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          "chosen",
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          "merit",
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      ],
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        "(idiomatic) To make the best of a difficult situation; to recast or portray an action or situation in which one has no alternatives as an action or situation which was deliberately chosen on its merits."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "make the best of a bad bargain"
        },
        {
          "word": "necessity is the mother of invention"
        }
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        {
          "code": "cs",
          "lang": "Czech",
          "sense": "to make the best of a difficult situation",
          "word": "z nouze ctnost"
        },
        {
          "code": "nl",
          "lang": "Dutch",
          "sense": "to make the best of a difficult situation",
          "word": "van de nood een deugd maken"
        },
        {
          "code": "de",
          "lang": "German",
          "sense": "to make the best of a difficult situation",
          "word": "aus der Not eine Tugend machen"
        },
        {
          "code": "el",
          "lang": "Greek",
          "roman": "káno tin anágki filotimía",
          "sense": "to make the best of a difficult situation",
          "word": "κάνω την ανάγκη φιλοτιμία"
        },
        {
          "code": "hu",
          "lang": "Hungarian",
          "sense": "to make the best of a difficult situation",
          "word": "a maga javára fordítja"
        },
        {
          "code": "it",
          "lang": "Italian",
          "sense": "to make the best of a difficult situation",
          "word": "fare di necessità virtù"
        },
        {
          "code": "es",
          "lang": "Spanish",
          "sense": "to make the best of a difficult situation",
          "word": "hacer de la necesidad virtud"
        }
      ]
    }
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      "word": "make the best of a bad bargain"
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          "text": "Indeed, because you are a banish'd man,\nTherefore, above the rest, we parley to you:\nAre you content to be our general?\nTo make a virtue of necessity\nAnd live, as we do, in this wilderness?",
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        {
          "ref": "1906, George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara, Preface:",
          "text": "Nietzsche, as I gather, regarded the slave-morality as having been invented and imposed on the world by slaves making a virtue of necessity and a religion of their servitude.",
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        "(idiomatic) To make the best of a difficult situation; to recast or portray an action or situation in which one has no alternatives as an action or situation which was deliberately chosen on its merits."
      ],
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        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
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    {
      "code": "cs",
      "lang": "Czech",
      "sense": "to make the best of a difficult situation",
      "word": "z nouze ctnost"
    },
    {
      "code": "nl",
      "lang": "Dutch",
      "sense": "to make the best of a difficult situation",
      "word": "van de nood een deugd maken"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "to make the best of a difficult situation",
      "word": "aus der Not eine Tugend machen"
    },
    {
      "code": "el",
      "lang": "Greek",
      "roman": "káno tin anágki filotimía",
      "sense": "to make the best of a difficult situation",
      "word": "κάνω την ανάγκη φιλοτιμία"
    },
    {
      "code": "hu",
      "lang": "Hungarian",
      "sense": "to make the best of a difficult situation",
      "word": "a maga javára fordítja"
    },
    {
      "code": "it",
      "lang": "Italian",
      "sense": "to make the best of a difficult situation",
      "word": "fare di necessità virtù"
    },
    {
      "code": "es",
      "lang": "Spanish",
      "sense": "to make the best of a difficult situation",
      "word": "hacer de la necesidad virtud"
    }
  ],
  "word": "make a virtue of necessity"
}

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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-02-08 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-02-02 using wiktextract (f90d964 and 9dbd323). 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.