Lexic.us

Definition of Necessity

1. Noun. The condition of being essential or indispensable.

2. Noun. Anything indispensable. "A place where the requisites of water fuel and fodder can be obtained"

Definition of Necessity

1. n. The quality or state of being necessary, unavoidable, or absolutely requisite; inevitableness; indispensableness.

Definition of Necessity

1. Noun. The quality or state of being necessary, unavoidable, or absolutely requisite. ¹

2. Noun. The condition of being needy or necessitous; pressing need; indigence; want. ¹

3. Noun. That which is necessary; a requisite; something indispensable. ¹

4. Noun. That which makes an act or an event unavoidable; irresistible force; overruling power; compulsion, physical or moral; fate; fatality. ¹

5. Noun. The negation of freedom in voluntary action; the subjection of all phenomena, whether material or spiritual, to inevitable causation; necessitarianism. ¹

¹ Source: wiktionary.com

Definition of Necessity

1. [n -TIES]

Medical Definition of Necessity

1. Origin: OE. Necessite, F. Necessite, L. Necessitas, fr. Necesse. See Necessary. 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. 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. Synonym: See Need. Source: Websters Dictionary (01 Mar 1998)

Lexicographical Neighbors of Necessity

necessitarianism necessitarians necessitate necessitated necessitates necessitating necessitation necessitations necessitied necessities

necessitous necessitously necessitousness necessitude necessitudes necessity (current term) necessity is the mother of innovation necessity is the mother of invention necitumumab neck-brace

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Literary usage of Necessity

Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:

1. Kant's Kritik of Judgment by Immanuel Kant (1892)
"The subjective necessity, which we ascribe to the judgment of taste, ... The condition of necessity which a judgment of taste asserts is the Idea of a ..."

2. The Republic of Plato by Plato (1909)
""The so-called necessity of Diomede" of the text may well mean "an overmastering necessity." According to the Scholiast on this passage, ..."

3. Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin (1921)
"If an inquiry be made concerning the necessity of this, it was not indeed a simple, or, as we commonly say, an absolute necessity, but such as arose from ..."

4. Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant, J. M. D. Meiklejohn (1878)
"Exposition of the Cosmological Idea of Freedom in harmony \ with the Universal Law of Natural necessity. I have thought it advisable to lay before the ..."

5. A Treatise on Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental by David Hume, Thomas Hill Green, Thomas Hodge Grose (1882)
"There must necessity be an active power to produce our ideas, ... From a follower of Hume it of course invites the reply a necessity that he does not see ..."

6. The Federalist: A Commentary on the Constitution of the United States, Being by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, Henry Cabot Lodge (1888)
"The possibility of a question of this nature proves the necessity of laying ... To the People of the State of New York : The necessity of a Constitution, ..."

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