Necessary

/ˈnɛs.ə.sɹi/ · adjective

Meaning

Required, essential, whether logically inescapable or needed in order to achieve a desired result or avoid some penalty..

Definitions by Sense

1. Required, essential, whether logically inescapable or needed in order to achieve a desired result or avoid some penalty.
2. Unavoidable, inevitable.
3. (obsolete) Determined, involuntary: acting from compulsion rather than free will.
4. (chiefly UK, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maine, archaic, euphemistic, usually with the definite article) A place to do the "necessary" business of urination and defecation: an outhouse or lavatory.
5. (obsolete) Necessity.

Example Sentences

Although I wished to think that all was false, it was yet necessary that I, who thus thought, must in some sense exist.

It is absolutely necessary that you call and confirm your appointment.

1.Sen. ...The faults Bloody: 'Tis necessary he should dye: Nothing imboldens sinne so much, as Mercy.

If it is absolutely necessary to use public computers, you should plan ahead and forward your e-mail to a temporary, disposable account.

Cæs. Cowards dye many times before their deaths, The valiant neuer taste of death but once: Of all the Wonders that I yet haue heard, It seemes to me most strange that men should feare, Seeing that death, a necessary end Will come, when it will come.

But that a necessary being should give birth to a being with any amount, however limited, of moral freedom, is infinitely less conceivable than that parents of the insect or fish type should give birth to a perfect mammal.

It soon became fashionable for even the poorest families to have a necessary not far from their cabin. […] The more affluent settlers painted their necessarys in bright colors and carved their names on the doors.

[…] loss of that whole dominion of New England, and consequently of their Majesties' other American Plantations, endangered not only by the want of provisions, but by the many ships, vessels, seamen and other necessarys in New England, ...

Synonyms for necessary

Antonyms for necessary

Related Words

Word Forms

• necessarier
• more necessary
• necessariest
• most necessary
• necessaries
• necessarys

Usage Notes

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