Necessity, n.; pl. Necessities.
Etymology: [OE. necessite, F. nécessité, 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.
3 more senses
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.
Syn. -- See Need.
Shades of meaning
Necessity is the quality of being necessary, or the quality of that which can not but be, become, or be true, or be accepted as true. Need and want always imply a lack; necessity may be used in this sense, but in the higher philosophical sense necessity simply denotes the exclusion of any alternative either in thought or fact; righteousness is a necessity (not a need) of the divine nature. Need suggests the possibility of supplying the deficiency which want expresses; to speak of a person's want of decision merely points out a weakness in his character; to say that he has need of decision implies that he can exercise or attain it. As applied to a deficiency, necessity is more imperative than need; a weary person is in need of rest; when rest becomes a necessity he has no choice but to stop work. An essential is something, as a quality, or element, that belongs to the essence of something else so as to be inseparable from it in its normal condition, or in any complete idea or statement of it. Compare necessary; predestination.
Prepositions
The necessity of surrender; a necessity for action; this is a necessity to me.