See let the perfect be the enemy of the good in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for let the perfect be the enemy of the good meaning in English (3.3kB)
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"tags": [
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},
{
"form": "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good",
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{
"form": "let the perfect be the enemy of the good",
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"form": "let the perfect be the enemy of the good",
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},
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"name": "en-verb"
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"pos": "verb",
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"name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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"examples": [
{
"ref": "1960: Macdonald College, The Macdonald Farm Journal, volumes 21–22, page 7 (R. J. Cooke)",
"text": "More data and more analyses will provide better information for the future, but we dare not let “the perfect be the enemy of the good”."
},
{
"ref": "1973, Official journal of the European Communities, numbers 165-169, page 161",
"text": "Of course they are far from perfect, of course we are more than ready to welcome constructive improvements to them, but I beg Parliament and also Member Governments not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1978, Welfare Reform Proposals: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Public Assistance of the Committee on Finance, United States Senate, Ninety-fifth Congress, Second Session, volume 3, United States Government Printing Office, page 572",
"text": "Incremental reform can move us forward and can improve the plight of the poor. I hope we do not let “the perfect be the enemy of the good” in welfare reform.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2007, Chris Brian, The Politics Show, Wales regional report",
"text": "But we shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"To insist on the total realization of a goal and reject any compromise, thereby decreasing the chance of achieving even a part of that goal."
],
"id": "en-let_the_perfect_be_the_enemy_of_the_good-en-verb-nNI--dHk",
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"raw_glosses": [
"(idiomatic) To insist on the total realization of a goal and reject any compromise, thereby decreasing the chance of achieving even a part of that goal."
],
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"word": "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"
},
{
"word": "perfect is the enemy of good"
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"form": "let the perfect be the enemy of the good",
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"name": "en-verb"
}
],
"lang": "English",
"lang_code": "en",
"pos": "verb",
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{
"ref": "1960: Macdonald College, The Macdonald Farm Journal, volumes 21–22, page 7 (R. J. Cooke)",
"text": "More data and more analyses will provide better information for the future, but we dare not let “the perfect be the enemy of the good”."
},
{
"ref": "1973, Official journal of the European Communities, numbers 165-169, page 161",
"text": "Of course they are far from perfect, of course we are more than ready to welcome constructive improvements to them, but I beg Parliament and also Member Governments not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1978, Welfare Reform Proposals: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Public Assistance of the Committee on Finance, United States Senate, Ninety-fifth Congress, Second Session, volume 3, United States Government Printing Office, page 572",
"text": "Incremental reform can move us forward and can improve the plight of the poor. I hope we do not let “the perfect be the enemy of the good” in welfare reform.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "2007, Chris Brian, The Politics Show, Wales regional report",
"text": "But we shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
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"To insist on the total realization of a goal and reject any compromise, thereby decreasing the chance of achieving even a part of that goal."
],
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"(idiomatic) To insist on the total realization of a goal and reject any compromise, thereby decreasing the chance of achieving even a part of that goal."
],
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"word": "let the perfect be the enemy of the good"
}
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-30 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (210104c and c9440ce). 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.