necessary

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   unavoidably determined by prior circumstances

   the necessary consequences of one's actions

2. 2
   adj

   Required, essential, whether logically inescapable or needed in order to achieve a desired result or avoid some penalty.

   Although I wished to think that all was false, it was yet necessary that I, who thus thought, must in some sense exist.

3. 3
   adj

   Unavoidable, inevitable.

   If it is absolutely necessary to use public computers, you should plan ahead and forward your e-mail to a temporary, disposable account.

4. 4
   adj

   Determined, involuntary: acting from compulsion rather than free will.

   But that a necessary being should give birth to a being with any amount, however limited, of moral freedom, is infinitely less conceivable than that parents of the insect or fish type should give birth to a perfect mammal.

5. 5
   noun

   A place to do the "necessary" business of urination and defecation: an outhouse or lavatory.

   It soon became fashionable for even the poorest families to have a necessary not far from their cabin. […] The more affluent settlers painted their necessarys in bright colors and carved their names on the doors.

6. 6
   noun

   Necessity.

   […] loss of that whole dominion of New England, and consequently of their Majesties' other American Plantations, endangered not only by the want of provisions, but by the many ships, vessels, seamen and other necessarys in New England, ...

7. 7
   adj

   absolutely essential

8. 8
   noun

   anything indispensable

Etymology

From Middle English necessarye, from Old French necessaire, from Latin necessārius (“unavoidable, inevitable, required”), variant of necesse (“unavoidable, inevitable”), probably from ne or non cessum, from the perfect passive participle of cēdō (“yield; avoid, withdraw”); see cede. Older use as a noun in reference to an outhouse or lavatory under the influence of English and Latin necessārium, a medieval term for the place for monks’ “unavoidable” business, usually located behind or attached to monastic dormitories.