necessity

From Middle English necessite, from Old French necessite, from Latin necessitās (“unavoidableness, compulsion, exigency, necessity”), from necesse (“unavoidable, inevitable”); see necessary.

• IPA^(key): /nɪˈsɛsəti/

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necessity (countable and uncountable, plural necessities)

1. The quality or state of being necessary, unavoidable, or absolutely requisite. (Can we add an example for this sense?)
   • 2013 June 28, Joris Luyendijk, “Our banks are out of control”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 3, page 21:

     Seeing the British establishment struggle with the financial sector is like watching an alcoholic […].  Until 2008 there was denial over what finance had become. […]  But the scandals kept coming, […]. A broad section of the political class now recognises the need for change but remains unable to see the necessity of a fundamental overhaul.

   I bought a new table out of necessity. My old one was ruined.

2. The condition of being needy; desperate need; lack (Can we add an example for this sense?)
3. Something necessary; a requisite; something indispensable.
   • 20th century, Tenzin Gyatso (attributed)

     Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

   A tent is a necessity if you plan on camping.

4. Something which makes an act or an event unavoidable; an irresistible force; overruling power (Can we add an example for this sense?)
   • 1804, Wordsworth, The Small Celandine

     I stopped, and said with inly muttered voice,

     'It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold:

     This neither is its courage nor its choice,

     But its necessity in being old.

5. The negation of freedom in voluntary action; the subjection of all phenomena, whether material or spiritual, to inevitable causation; necessitarianism. (Can we add an example for this sense?)
6. (law) Greater utilitarian good; used in justification of a criminal act.

   doctrine of necessity

7. (law, in the plural) Indispensable requirements (of life).

• (state of being necessary): inevitability, certainty

• (state of being necessary): impossibility, contingency
• (something indispensable): luxury

• necessity in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• necessity in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911

• cysteines