Noun

(en noun)

(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 9780751525380, 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 .

(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.

(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.

(archaic) A relation or connection between people or things.Oxford English Dictionary , 2nd ed., 1989.

* 1845 , Jeremy Taylor,The Great Exemplar of Sanctity and Holy Life, described in the History of the Life and Death of our Ever-Blessed Saviour, Jesus Christ , Vol. 1, London, p. 14:

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

Noun

(necessities)

The quality or state of being necessary, unavoidable, or absolutely requisite.

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-28, author=(Joris Luyendijk)

, volume=189, issue=3, page=21, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Our banks are out of control , passage=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.}}

The condition of being needy or necessitous; pressing need; indigence; want.

That which is necessary; a requisite; something indispensable.

*

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

That which makes an act or an event unavoidable; irresistible force; overruling power; compulsion, physical or moral; fate; fatality.

* 1804 , Wordsworth,

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.

The negation of freedom in voluntary action; the subjection of all phenomena, whether material or spiritual, to inevitable causation; necessitarianism.

(legal) Greater utilitarian good; used in justification of a criminal act .

(legal, in the plural) Indispensable requirements (of life).