necessity

Meaning

  1. (countable, uncountable) The quality or state of being necessary, unavoidable, or absolutely requisite.
  2. (countable, uncountable) The condition of being needy; desperate need; lack.
  3. (countable, uncountable) Something necessary; a requisite; something indispensable.
  4. (countable, uncountable) Something which makes an act or an event unavoidable; an irresistible force; overruling power.
  5. (countable, uncountable) The negation of freedom in voluntary action; the subjection of all phenomena, whether material or spiritual, to inevitable causation; necessitarianism.
  6. (countable, uncountable) Greater utilitarian good; used in justification of a criminal act.
  7. (countable, in-plural, uncountable) Indispensable requirements (of life).

Synonyms

need
A1
requirement
C2
want
A1
essential
C1
demand
B2
inevitability
42k
necessary
B1
requisite
42k
must
A1
obligation
C1
compulsion
C2
poverty
C1
needs
A1
exigency
occasion
B2
prerequisite
42k
certainty
C2
requisiteness
imperative
C2
essentialness
importance
B2
use
A1
indispensability
knives
C1
necessities
23k
neediness
predicament
C2
pricelessness
quality
B2
require
B2
restrictiveness
scrape
C2
terror
B2
urge
C1
urgency
C2
usefulness
28k
value
B1
whetstone
ineluctability
vitalness

need-be

adversity
C2
necessitousness
advisability
call
A1
cause
A1
constraint
47k
demands
B2
difficulty
C1
distress
C1
Translations

nécessité
Notwendigkeit
necessità
necesidad
necessidade
besoin
noodzaak
Bedürfnis

noodzakelijkheid

ανάγκη

αναγκαιότητα

bisogno
Not
Frequency

C2
Pronounced as (IPA)
/nɪˈsɛsəti/
Etymology

Inherited from Middle English
necessite
In summary

From Middle English necessite, from Old French necessite, from Latin necessitās (“unavoidableness, compulsion, exigency, necessity”), from necesse (“unavoidable, inevitable”); see necessary. Doublet of Necessitas.

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