different between necessitude vs necessity

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /n??s?s?t(j)u?d/

Noun

necessitude (plural necessitudes)

1. (rare) The state or characteristic of being in need; neediness.
   • 1870, "Lord Kilgobbin," The Cornhill Magazine, vol. 22, p. 521:

     It had been of all things the most harassing and wearying—a life of dreary necessitude—a perpetual struggle with debt.

   • 2001, Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, The Cause, ?ISBN, p. 408:

     Even if she could have faced life without him, she could not go through it all again, the bankruptcy and shame and necessitude.

2. (rare, usually pluralized) A circumstance or event which is necessary or unavoidable, especially because it is a requirement of a social role or natural state of affairs.
   • 1814, Félix de Beaujour, Sketch of the United States of North America trans. William Waldon, London, p. 169:

     The Americans. . . fear not the necessitudes of fortune.

   • 1872, James Parsons, "The Ancient Commonwealth," The American Law Register (1852-1891), vol. 20, no. 8, New Series vol. 11, p. 485:

     He lives with them in the isolated home of the tribe and enters into the mysterious communion with the domestic gods who still take part in the necessitudes of the family.

   • 1995, Michael W. McConnell and Edmund Burke, "Establishment and Toleration in Edmund Burke's 'Constitution of Freedom'," The Supreme Court Review, Vol. 1995, p. 437:

     As Conor Cruise O'Brien has pointed out, this passage has a "poignant ring," in light of the probable fact that Burke's father was one of those who betrayed his "duty" by sacrificing his "opinion of eternal happiness" to the necessitudes of legal practice.

3. (rare, chiefly philosophy) Necessity.
   • 1981, Graham Dawson, "Justified True Belief Is Knowledge," The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 31, no. 125: p. 328:

     In Popperian terms, it demonstrates the necessitude of public debate.

4. (archaic) A relation or connection between people or things.

   • The relation and necessitude is trifling and loose, and they are all equally contemptible; because the mind entertains no loves or union.

Usage notes

• Necessitude, necessitousness, necessitation, necessariness are all nouns closely related to necessity, but they tend to have narrower ranges of usage than the term necessity. The principal sense of necessitude and necessitousness is impoverishment, but the plural form of the former (necessitudes) denotes a set of circumstances which is inevitable or unavoidable. Necessitation is used to suggest necessity as a philosophical or cosmic principle. Necessariness tends to be used to stress a direct connection to the adjective necessary.

References

English

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /n??s?s?ti/

Noun

necessity (countable and uncountable, plural necessities)

2. The quality or state of being necessary, unavoidable, or absolutely requisite.
3. The condition of being needy; desperate need; lack.
   • 1863, Richard Sibbes, The Successful Seeker, in The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, D.D., Volume VI, James Nichol, page 125,

     For it is in vain for a man to think to seek God in his necessity and exigence, if he seek not God in his ordinances, and do not joy in them.

4. Something necessary; a requisite; something indispensable.
   • 20th century, Tenzin Gyatso (attributed)

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

5. Something which makes an act or an event unavoidable; an irresistible force; overruling power.
   • 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.

6. 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?)
7. (law) Greater utilitarian good; used in justification of a criminal act.

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

Synonyms

• (state of being necessary): inevitability, certainty

Antonyms

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

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Further reading

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

Anagrams

• cysteines