make a virtue of necessity
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To make the best of a bad situation
Literally: turning a necessary action into a virtuous one
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
But since response from ministers by the 1840s was extremely circumspect the reformers were probably making a virtue of necessity.
Piatakov and his faction made a virtue of necessity.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “make a virtue of necessity” mean?
To make the best of a bad situation Literally: turning a necessary action into a virtuous one
Is “make a virtue of necessity” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.