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Pinch vs Necessity - What's the difference?

pinch | necessity | Related terms |

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)
  • To squeeze a small amount of a person's skin and flesh, making it hurt.
  • The children were scolded for pinching each other.
    This shoe pinches my foot.
  • To steal, usually of something almost trivial or inconsequential.
  • Someone has pinched my handkerchief!
  • * {{quote-news
  • , year=2012 , date=May 13 , author=Alistair Magowan , title=Sunderland 0-1 Man Utd , work=BBC Sport 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.}}
  • (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.
  • (Gower)
  • * Franklin
  • the wretch whom avarice bids to pinch and spare
  • To seize; to grip; to bite; said of animals.
  • * Chapman
  • He [the hound] pinched and pulled her down.
  • (figurative) To cramp; to straiten; to oppress; to starve.
  • to be pinched for money
  • * Sir Walter Raleigh
  • want of room pinching a whole nation
  • To move, as a railroad car, by prying the wheels with a pinch.
  • Noun

    (es)
  • 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:
  • 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 .
  • An organic herbal smoke additive.
  • Derived terms

    * feel the pinch * in a pinch * at a pinch * pinchy * take with a pinch of salt

    Descendants

    * Japanese: (pinchi)

    necessity

    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

    Anagrams

    *