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).

Noun

(-)

The state or characteristic of being unnecessary.

* 1808 , Works of Joseph Hall, D.D , Vol. 9, edited by Josiah Pratt, London, p. 9:

The unavoidableness of which effects hath carried some of their Casuists into an opinion, of the unnecessariness of devotion in these holy businesses: so as one says . . . "Though it be convenient, that the Communicant should have actual devotion; yet, it is not necessary."

* 1913 , Arnold Bennett, The Human Machine? , p. 73:

A disciplined brain will at once show the unnecessariness of most ambitions, and will ensure that the remainder shall be conducted with reason.

* 2007 , Karen von Hahn, " Unnecessary Accessories of the Rich and Famous," Globe and Mail , 15 June (retrieved 30 Aug. 2009):

In the sad case of Paris Hilton, whose sheer unnecessariness epitomizes her career, her unnecessary accessory of choice is an SUV.