urgent

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Requiring immediate attention.

   An urgent appeal was sent out for assistance.

2. 2
   adj

   Of people: insistent, solicitous.

   The Egyptians were vrgent vpon the people that they might send them out of the land in haste.

3. 3
   adj

   compelling immediate action

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French urgent (“pressing, impelling”), from Latin urgēns, from urgēre (“to press”), from Proto-Indo-European *werǵʰ- (“bind, squeeze”). Equivalent to urge + -ent. Related to German würgen (“to strangle”), Lithuanian ver̃žti (“to string, tighten, constrict”), Russian (poetic) отверза́ть (otverzátʹ, “to open”, literally “to untie”), Polish otwierać (“to open”)) and English worry, wring, wreak, wreck.