释义 |
necessity /nɪˈsɛsɪti /noun (plural necessities)1 [mass noun] The state or fact of being required: the necessity of providing parental guidance...- But the fact that the necessity for dialogue has to be stressed in the more than 50-year-old alliance shows how tense relations are in reality.
- This year there has been no necessity for farmers to choose between the census or the simplified systems.
- The necessity to have access to larger markets is absolutely crucial.
Synonyms indispensability, need, needfulness 1.1The state of being unavoidable: the necessity of growing old...- On the level of the abstract theory of capital expansion and exploitation, it is not possible to argue for the inevitable necessity of the North-South divide.
- At this time thinking was dominated by Kant who had stated that Euclidean geometry is the inevitable necessity of thought.
- Like theoretical reasoning, practical reasoning seeks in a sense to demonstrate the necessity of certain actions.
Synonyms inevitability, unavoidability, certainty, inescapability, inexorability, ineluctability 1.2A situation enforcing a certain course of action: political necessity induced him to consider it...- Of course, political necessity prevented the president from blurting the awkward truth that the nation is already running near-record deficits.
- Political ideology is the result of individuals making statements about the world based on theory, and in many cases, political necessity.
- It is driven by political necessity, and racial opportunism.
Synonyms force/pressure of circumstance, need, obligation, call, exigency; crisis, emergency, urgency; French force majeure 2An indispensable thing: a good book is a necessity when travelling...- These patients do not have even basic necessities such as clothes, soap and toothpaste.
- Health care is not a golf game, it's a human necessity.
- You drastically cut back on basic necessities such as food or travel to pay creditors.
3 [mass noun] Philosophy The principle according to which something must be so, by virtue either of logic or of natural law.But since the Idea of Causation is a necessary condition of the very possibility of objective empirical knowledge, Newton's laws must share this necessity....- Of necessity it must deal with a ruling class that owns the material means of extracting or distributing information, or with a producing class that extracts and distributes.
- The reaction of some to this whole exercise will be to say that it fortifies a dislike they had always had for natural necessity - even before it was relativised to a time.
3.1 [count noun] A condition that cannot be otherwise, or a statement asserting this.The absolute necessity of the judgment is only a conditioned necessity of the thing, or of the predicate in the judgment....- Whence the force of the second ‘not’, which I take to be more than just the assertion of a pragmatic necessity in the teeth of radical scepticism.
- Artists of this region have always created art out of a necessity that transcends the restrictive conditions imposed upon them.
Phrasesnecessity is the mother of invention of necessity OriginLate Middle English: from Old French necessite, from Latin necessitas, from necesse 'be needful'. |