What's the difference between
and
Enter two words to compare and contrast their definitions, origins, and synonyms to better understand how those words are related.

Necessity vs Opulence - What's the difference?

necessity | opulence |

As nouns the difference between necessity and opulence

is that necessity is the quality or state of being necessary, unavoidable, or absolutely requisite while opulence is wealth.

necessity

English

(wikipedia necessity) (Webster 1913)

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).

    • Synonyms

    * (state of being necessary) inevitability, certainty

    Antonyms

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

    Derived terms

    * make a virtue of necessity

    Related terms

    * bare necessities * necessary * necessariness * necessitate * necessitation * necessitousness * necessitude

    External links

    * *

    Anagrams

    *

    opulence

    English

    Noun

    (-)
  • wealth
  • abundance, bounty, profusion

    • Quotations

    * 1721 , (John Gay), A Panegyrical Epistle to Mr. Thomas Snow, Gold?mith, near Temple-Bar; Occa?ion’d by his Buying and Selling the Third South-Sea Sub?criptions, taken in by the Directors at a Thou?and per Cent'', published in 1733 in ''Miscellanies , volume 3, page 239: *: There in full Opulence a Banker dwelt,
    Who all the Joys and Pangs of Riches felt;
    His Side-board glitter’d with imagin’d Plate;
    And his proud Fancy held a va?t E?tate. * C. J. Fox: *: The most meritorious persons have always … been removed from opulence .

    Synonyms

    * See also