Necessity

ahd-5
  • noun. undefined
  • noun. The condition or quality of being necessary.
  • noun. Something necessary.
  • noun. undefined
  • noun. Something dictated by invariable physical laws.
  • noun. The force exerted by circumstance.
  • noun. The state or fact of being in need.
  • noun. Pressing or urgent need, especially that arising from poverty.
  • idiom. (of necessity) As an inevitable consequence; necessarily.
  • The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
  • noun. The condition or quality of being necessary or needful; the mode of being or of truth of that which is necessary; the impossibility of the contrary; the absolute character of a determination or limitation which is not merely without exception, but which would be so in any possible state of things; absolute constraint.
  • noun. As applied to the human will, the opposite of liberty.
  • noun. In philosophy, the inevitable determination of the human will by a motive or other cause. This is only a special use of the word in the free-will dispute. In philosophy generally, by the necessity of a cognition is properly meant a cognized necessity, or universality in reference to possible states of things; although some writers use the word to denote a constraint upon the power of thought.
  • noun. A condition requisite for the attainment of any purpose; also, a necessary of life, without which life, or at least the life appropriate to one's station, would be impossible.
  • noun. Want of the means of living; lack of the means to live as becomes one's station or is one's habit.
  • noun. Extreme need, in general.
  • noun. Business; something needful to be done.
  • noun. Bad illicit spirit.
  • noun. Synonyms Necessity, Need. Necessity is more urgent than need: a merchant may have need of more money in order to the most successful managing of his business; he may have a necessity for more cash in hand to avoid going into bankruptcy.
  • the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
  • noun. The quality or state of being necessary, unavoidable, or absolutely requisite; inevitableness; indispensableness.
  • noun. The condition of being needy or necessitous; pressing need; indigence; want.
  • noun. That which is necessary; a necessary; a requisite; something indispensable; -- often in the plural.
  • noun. That which makes an act or an event unavoidable; irresistible force; overruling power; compulsion, physical or moral; fate; fatality.
  • noun. The negation of freedom in voluntary action; the subjection of all phenomena, whether material or spiritual, to inevitable causation; necessitarianism.
  • noun. by necessary consequence; by compulsion, or irresistible power; perforce.
  • Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
  • noun. The quality or state of being necessary, unavoidable, or absolutely requisite.
  • noun. The condition of being needy or necessitous; pressing need; indigence; want.
  • noun. That which is necessary; a requisite; something indispensable.
  • noun. That which makes an act or an event unavoidable; irresistible force; overruling power; compulsion, physical or moral; fate; fatality.
  • noun. The negation of freedom in voluntary action; the subjection of all phenomena, whether material or spiritual, to inevitable causation; necessitarianism.
  • noun. Greater utilitarian good; used in justification of a criminal act.
  • noun. Indispensable requirements (of life).
  • WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
  • noun. the condition of being essential or indispensable
  • noun. anything indispensable
  • Word Usage
    "If the failure of mills and furnaces causes men to be thrown out of employment, the remedy is to be found, not in the revisal of the measures that have produced these effects, but in the exportation of the men themselves to distant climes, thus producing a necessity for the permanent use of ships instead of canal-boats, with diminished power to maintain trade, and every increase of this _necessity_ is regarded as an evidence of growing wealth and power."
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