by fair means or foul in English

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{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "prepositional phrase",
        "head": ""
      },
      "expansion": "by fair means or foul",
      "name": "head"
    },
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "by fair means or foul",
      "name": "en-PP"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "prep_phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w"
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      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1886, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, page 82:",
          "text": "[Utterson] resumed; \"if not by fair means, then by foul—if not of your consent, then by brute force!\"",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "By any means necessary, not excluding dirty tricks."
      ],
      "id": "en-by_fair_means_or_foul-en-prep_phrase-F6JisFow",
      "links": [
        [
          "dirty trick",
          "dirty trick"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "by hook or by crook"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "by fair means or foul"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "prepositional phrase",
        "head": ""
      },
      "expansion": "by fair means or foul",
      "name": "head"
    },
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "by fair means or foul",
      "name": "en-PP"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "prep_phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English prepositional phrases",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1886, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, page 82:",
          "text": "[Utterson] resumed; \"if not by fair means, then by foul—if not of your consent, then by brute force!\"",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "By any means necessary, not excluding dirty tricks."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "dirty trick",
          "dirty trick"
        ]
      ],
      "synonyms": [
        {
          "word": "by hook or by crook"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "by fair means or foul"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-12-15 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-12-04 using wiktextract (8a39820 and 4401a4c). 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.

"by fair means or foul" meaning in English

Prepositional phrase