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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
expediency
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
political
▪ What are needed are more Mario Cuomos, politicians who are prepared to put moral and practical argument above political expediency.
▪ Now, once again, the thin reed of refugee protection has fallen prey to the winds of political expediency.
▪ They are politics of political expediency.
▪ But localised flood prevention solutions often have implications for other areas and political expediency should not determine the solution.
▪ These rates are clearly a trade-off between economic logic and political expediency.
▪ This is often a legacy of historic inception, piecemeal development, and political expediency.
▪ Perhaps it had been a matter of legal or political expediency.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ The governor vetoed this bill out of political expediency rather than principle.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And a system whose first and last resort was all too often expediency.
▪ And this production, played on a red-carpeted traverse stage, brings out excellently the mixture of bombast and expediency.
▪ But his actions were perhaps not entirely a matter of cynical expediency.
▪ But localised flood prevention solutions often have implications for other areas and political expediency should not determine the solution.
▪ Dooley made popcorn, and Barnabas did his business at the hedge with great expediency.
▪ He would continue to make most of his decisions on the basis of military expediency.
▪ It was for Congress to determine the question of expediency.
▪ The potential for expediency in planning is vast.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Expediency

Expedience \Ex*pe"di*ence\, Expediency \Ex*pe"di*en*cy\,, n.

  1. The quality of being expedient or advantageous; fitness or suitableness to effect a purpose intended; adaptedness to self-interest; desirableness; advantage; advisability; -- sometimes contradistinguished from moral rectitude or principle.

    Divine wisdom discovers no expediency in vice.
    --Cogan.

    To determine concerning the expedience of action.
    --Sharp.

    Much declamation may be heard in the present day against expediency, as if it were not the proper object of a deliberative assembly, and as if it were only pursued by the unprincipled.
    --Whately.

  2. Expedition; haste; dispatch. [Obs.]

    Making hither with all due expedience.
    --Shak.

  3. An expedition; enterprise; adventure. [Obs.]

    Forwarding this dear expedience.
    --Shak.

Wiktionary
expediency

n. 1 (context uncountable English) The quality of being fit or suitable to effect some desired end or the purpose intended; suitability for particular circumstance or situation. 2 (context uncountable English) Pursuit of the course of action that brings the desired effect even if it is unjust or unprincipled. 3 (context obsolete English) Haste; dispatch. 4 (context countable English) An expedient.

WordNet
expediency

n. the quality of being suited to the end in view [syn: expedience] [ant: inexpedience, inexpedience]

Usage examples of "expediency".

Nations thus tempted to interfere are not always able to resist the counsels of seeming expediency and ungenerous ambition, although measures adopted under such influences seldom fail to be unfortunate and injurious to those adopting them.

But its basis was expediency, and the baronet had a better aphorism of his own to confute him with.

As we have expressed earlier, while Lord Jecks and other respected lords of Defalk have reluctantly endorsed the expediency of a prolonged Regency, as did we, our initial concerns about the continuity of such an arrangement remain, especially about the use of the liedgeld.

Then again, he said, the declaration is to be extended to all offices of trust and emolument under the crown, and the bill left it entirely to the king to say in such cases, whether his majesty would, or would not require such a declaration: he could not but object to the provisions of a bill, the object of which was to take away the sacramental test merely on the ground of expediency, and to substitute in its place a declaration which, in some instances, might or might not be taken, according to the will of the sovereign.

A tin of cooking oil had popped its metal stopper and spilled, and in the expediency of getting a fire going, he opened the flue, stuffed a few pieces of oil-soaked wood and an oil-soaked blanket in and touched a match to it.

When, therefore, the First Secretary sounded him as to the expediency of some step in the direction of a firmer political combination than at present existing,--by which of course was meant the dethronement of the present Prime Minister,--Mr Roby had snubbed him!

Others sympathized fully with what was called the Southern cause, held firmly the right of secession, and hated cordially the Yankees, but doubted either the practicability or the expediency of secession, and opposed it till resolved on, but, after it was resolved on, yielded to none in their earnest support of it.

Thereafter the question of the use of liturgical forms became a mere question of expediency.

While such a demand may not in strictness be in derogation of public law, or perhaps of any existing treaty between the United States and a foreign country, the expediency of so far modifying the act as to exempt from tax the income of such consuls as are not citizens of the United States, derived from the emoluments of their office or from property not situated in the United States, is submitted to your serious consideration.

The terms of his admittance were so well understood to himself, that he distrusted the expediency of attempting to get upon the quays by the prison, the way he had entered, since he had little doubt that his retreat would be intercepted by those who kept the outer gate, and who were probably, by this time, in the secret of his true character.

If, in the interval between his first showing himself in my story and its publication in a separate volume, anything had occurred to make me question the justice or expediency of drawing and exhibiting such a portrait, I should have reconsidered it, with the view of retouching its sharper features.

Lincoln understood the President to be opposed, on grounds of expediency, to any and every improvement.

Whereupon there was a call to order, upon which another member got upon his legs, and there ensued a wordy and irregular combat, in the course of which the member for East Warra Warra denounced the member for North Carramburra as an obstructive monomaniac, who had so bullied and browbeaten the Chairman of the Commission which had been called to inquire into the expediency of a railway, that the result of the Commission had been most unsatisfactory.

In the shifting scenes of our varied partisan contests, the demands of supposed expediency had often produced curious results.

Tunipah development is allowed to proceed, expediency will doom the Furbish lousewort and the Microdipodops, and much else besides.