necessary

[ nes-uh-ser-ee ]
See synonyms for: necessarynecessaries on Thesaurus.com

adjective
  1. essential, indispensable, or requisite: The rotor is a necessary part of the motor.

  2. happening or existing by necessity: The snow has forced a necessary change in our plans.

  1. acting or proceeding from compulsion or necessity; not free; involuntary: a necessary agent.

  2. Logic.

    • (of a proposition) such that a denial of it involves a self-contradiction.

    • (of an inference or argument) such that its conclusion cannot be false if its supporting premises are true.

    • (of a condition) such that it must exist if a given event is to occur or a given thing is to exist.: Compare sufficient (def. 2).

noun,plural nec·es·sar·ies.
  1. something necessary or required for a particular purpose; necessity.

  2. necessaries, Law. food, clothing, etc., required by a dependent person and varying with their social or economic position or that of the person upon whom they are dependent.

  1. Chiefly New England. a privy or toilet.

Origin of necessary

1
First recorded in 1300–50; Middle English necessarie, from Latin necessārius “unavoidable, inevitable, needful,” equivalent to necess(e) (neuter indeclinable adjective) “unavoidable, necessary” + -ārius -ary

synonym study For necessary

1. Necessary, essential, indispensable, requisite indicate something vital for the fulfillment of a need. Necessary applies to something without which a condition cannot be fulfilled or to an inevitable consequence of certain events, conditions, etc.: Food is necessary to life. Multiplicity is a necessary result of division. Indispensable applies to something that cannot be done without or removed from the rest of a unitary condition: Food is indispensable to living things. He made himself indispensable as a companion. Something that is essential forms a vitally necessary condition of something: Air is essential to red-blooded animals. It is essential to understand the matter clearly. Requisite applies to what is thought necessary to fill out, complete, or perfect something: She had all the requisite qualifications for a position.

Other words for necessary

Opposites for necessary

Other words from necessary

  • nec·es·sar·i·ness, noun
  • qua·si-nec·es·sar·y, adjective

Words that may be confused with necessary

Words Nearby necessary

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use necessary in a sentence

British Dictionary definitions for necessary

necessary

/ (ˈnɛsɪsərɪ) /


adjective
  1. needed to achieve a certain desired effect or result; required

  2. resulting from necessity; inevitable: the necessary consequences of your action

  1. logic

    • (of a statement, formula, etc) true under all interpretations or in all possible circumstances

    • (of a proposition) determined to be true by its meaning, so that its denial would be self-contradictory

    • (of a property) essential, so that without it its subject would not be the entity it is

    • (of an inference) always yielding a true conclusion when its premises are true; valid

    • (of a condition) entailed by the truth of some statement or the obtaining of some state of affairs: Compare sufficient (def. 2)

  2. philosophy (in a nonlogical sense) expressing a law of nature, so that if it is in this sense necessary that all As are B, even although it is not contradictory to conceive of an A which is not B, we are licensed to infer that if something were an A it would have to be B

  3. rare compelled, as by necessity or law; not free

noun
  1. the necessary informal the money required for a particular purpose

  2. do the necessary informal to do something that is necessary in a particular situation

Origin of necessary

1
C14: from Latin necessārius indispensable, from necesse unavoidable

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012