'Necessity' definitions:
Definition of 'necessity'
From: WordNet
noun
The condition of being essential or indispensable
noun
Anything indispensable; "food and shelter are necessities of life"; "the essentials of the good life"; "allow farmers to buy their requirements under favorable conditions"; "a place where the requisites of water fuel and fodder can be obtained" [syn: necessity, essential, requirement, requisite, necessary] [ant: inessential, nonessential]
Definition of 'Necessity'
From: GCIDE
- Necessity \Ne*ces"si*ty\, n.; pl. Necessities. [OE. necessite, F. n['e]cessit['e], L. necessitas, fr. necesse. See Necessary.]
- 1. The quality or state of being necessary, unavoidable, or absolutely requisite; inevitableness; indispensableness. [1913 Webster]
- 2. The condition of being needy or necessitous; pressing need; indigence; want. [1913 Webster]
- Urge the necessity and state of times. --Shak. [1913 Webster]
- The extreme poverty and necessity his majesty was in. --Clarendon. [1913 Webster]
- 3. That which is necessary; a necessary; a requisite; something indispensable; -- often in the plural. [1913 Webster]
- These should be hours for necessities, Not for delights. --Shak. [1913 Webster]
- What was once to me Mere matter of the fancy, now has grown The vast necessity of heart and life. --Tennyson. [1913 Webster]
- 4. That which makes an act or an event unavoidable; irresistible force; overruling power; compulsion, physical or moral; fate; fatality. [1913 Webster]
- So spake the fiend, and with necessity, The tyrant's plea, excused his devilish deeds. --Milton. [1913 Webster]
- 5. (Metaph.) The negation of freedom in voluntary action; the subjection of all phenomena, whether material or spiritual, to inevitable causation; necessitarianism. [1913 Webster]
- Of necessity, by necessary consequence; by compulsion, or irresistible power; perforce. [1913 Webster]
- Syn: See Need. [1913 Webster]
Synonyms of 'necessity'
From: Moby Thesaurus
- absolute certainty,
- absoluteness,
- act of God,
- assurance,
- assuredness,
- bare cupboard,
- bare necessities,
- bare subsistence,
- beggarliness,
- beggary,
- call,
- call for,
- cause,
- certain knowledge,
- certainness,
- certainty,
- certitude,
- coaction,
- coercion,
- compulsion,
- compulsiveness,
- condition,
- constraint,
- dead certainty,
- decree,
- definiteness,
- demand,
- demand for,
- deprivation,
- desideration,
- desideratum,
- destitution,
- determinacy,
- determinateness,
- duress,
- empty purse,
- enforcement,
- essential,
- essentials,
- exigency,
- fate,
- fatefulness,
- force majeure,
- forcing,
- foredestiny,
- foregone conclusion,
- foreknowledge,
- foreordination,
- grinding poverty,
- gripe,
- hand-to-mouth existence,
- homelessness,
- impoverishment,
- indefeasibility,
- indigence,
- indispensable,
- indispensableness,
- ineluctability,
- inerrability,
- inerrancy,
- inescapableness,
- inevasibleness,
- inevitability,
- inevitable accident,
- inevitableness,
- inexorability,
- infallibilism,
- infallibility,
- inflexibility,
- irresistibility,
- irrevocability,
- lack,
- mendicancy,
- moneylessness,
- must,
- must item,
- necessaries,
- necessities,
- necessitousness,
- need,
- need for,
- needfulness,
- neediness,
- nonambiguity,
- noncontingency,
- obligation,
- obligement,
- occasion,
- pauperism,
- pauperization,
- penury,
- pinch,
- positiveness,
- predestination,
- predetermination,
- preordination,
- prerequirement,
- prerequisite,
- prescience,
- privation,
- probatum,
- proved fact,
- relentlessness,
- requirement,
- requisite,
- requisiteness,
- requisition,
- restraint,
- sine qua non,
- sureness,
- surety,
- the necessary,
- the needful,
- truth,
- unambiguity,
- unavoidable casualty,
- unavoidableness,
- uncontrollability,
- undeflectability,
- unequivocalness,
- univocity,
- unmistakableness,
- unpreventability,
- unyieldingness,
- vis major,
- want