"smaller evil" is correct and can be used in written English.
It is an idiom which means something that is less bad than other options, or a lesser of two evils. For example, "He made the difficult decision to choose the smaller evil and pay the fine rather than go to court."
"Compared to other forms of political persecution, the denial of the right to return home seems like a small evil," said Hu Ping, the editor of a pro-democracy journal in New York who has not been allowed to see family members in China since 1987.
He comes along for the ride, determined to have as much fun as one possibly can with Islamic radicals, white supremacists, Christian separatists and assorted conspiracy theorists, all of whom are convinced in some fashion that a small, evil cabal is secretly planning to take over the world.
These are the pleasures of her small, evil little life.
It was she who changed the name of Obelix's small, evil-tempered dog from Idéfix to Dogmatix, and transformed Panoramix into Getafix, provoking decades of scholarly musing as to whether the druid was a dopehead.
It's small evils so you can share the joy of the theater on social media.
But in the words of Screwtape, "Small evils are what corrupt humans, not large ones".
The depiction of a community harboring buried secrets also suggests a David Lynch nightmare of suppressed small-town evil.
Talk story about the exhibit at the Morgan Library called "Small Mischief: Evil Doings and Odd Disasters in Early Children's Books".
By Jane Boutwell The New Yorker, December 24 , 1984P. 26 Talk story about the exhibit at the Morgan Library called "Small Mischief: Evil Doings and Odd Disasters in Early Children's Books".
