Necessity

Definition of Necessity

Ne`ces´si`ty
n.1.The quality or state of being necessary, unavoidable, or absolutely requisite; inevitableness; indispensableness.
2.The condition of being needy or necessitous; pressing need; indigence; want.
Urge the necessity and state of times.
- Shak.
The extreme poverty and necessity his majesty was in.
- Clarendon.
3.That which is necessary; a necessary; a requisite; something indispensable; - often in the plural.
These should be hours for necessities,
Not for delights.
- Shak.
What was once to me
Mere matter of the fancy, now has grown
The vast necessity of heart and life.
- Tennyson.
4.That which makes an act or an event unavoidable; irresistible force; overruling power; compulsion, physical or moral; fate; fatality.
So spake the fiend, and with necessity,
The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds.
- Milton.
5.(Metaph.) The negation of freedom in voluntary action; the subjection of all phenomena, whether material or spiritual, to inevitable causation; necessitarianism.
Of necessity
by necessary consequence; by compulsion, or irresistible power; perforce.

Related Words

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-Necessity-
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Neck or nothing
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necklaced
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