Pinch vs Necessity - What's the difference?
pinch | necessity | Related terms |
To squeeze a small amount of a person's skin and flesh, making it hurt.
To steal, usually of something almost trivial or inconsequential.
* {{quote-news
, year=2012
, date=May 13
, author=Alistair Magowan
, title=Sunderland 0-1 Man Utd
, work=BBC Sport
(slang) To arrest or capture.
(horticulture) To cut shoots]] or [[bud, buds of a plant in order to shape the plant, or to improve its yield.
(nautical) To sail so close-hauled that the sails begin to flutter.
(hunting) To take hold; to grip, as a dog does.
(obsolete) To be niggardly or covetous.
* Franklin
To seize; to grip; to bite; said of animals.
* Chapman
(figurative) To cramp; to straiten; to oppress; to starve.
* Sir Walter Raleigh
To move, as a railroad car, by prying the wheels with a pinch.
The action of squeezing a small amount of a person's skin and flesh, making it hurt.
A small amount of powder or granules, such that the amount could be held between fingertip and thumb tip.
An awkward situation of some kind (especially money or social) which is difficult to escape.
* 1955 , edition, ISBN 0553249592, page 171:
An organic herbal smoke additive.
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= The condition of being needy or necessitous; pressing need; indigence; want.
That which is necessary; a requisite; something indispensable.
*
That which makes an act or an event unavoidable; irresistible force; overruling power; compulsion, physical or moral; fate; fatality.
* 1804 , Wordsworth,
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).
Pinch is a related term of necessity.
As nouns the difference between pinch and necessity
is that pinch is the action of squeezing a small amount of a person's skin and flesh, making it hurt while necessity is the quality or state of being necessary, unavoidable, or absolutely requisite.As a verb pinch
is to squeeze a small amount of a person's skin and flesh, making it hurt.pinch
English
Verb
(es)- The children were scolded for pinching each other.
- This shoe pinches my foot.
- Someone has pinched my handkerchief!
citation, page= , passage=Then, as the Sunderland fans' cheers bellowed around the stadium, United's title bid was over when it became apparent City had pinched a last-gasp winner to seal their first title in 44 years.}}
- (Gower)
- the wretch whom avarice bids to pinch and spare
- He [the hound] pinched and pulled her down.
- to be pinched for money
- want of room pinching a whole nation
Noun
(es)- It took nerve and muscle both to carry the body out and down the stairs to the lower hall, but he damn well had to get it out of his place and away from his door, and any of those four could have done it in a pinch', and it sure was a ' pinch .
Derived terms
* feel the pinch * in a pinch * at a pinch * pinchy * take with a pinch of saltDescendants
* Japanese: (pinchi)necessity
Noun
(necessities)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.}}
- Love and compassion are necessities , not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.
- 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.