2. The condition of being needy or necessitous; pressing
need; indigence; want.
Urge the necessity and state of times. --Shak.
The extreme poverty and necessity his majesty was
in. --Clarendon.
3. That which is necessary; a necessary; a requisite;
something indispensable; -- often in the plural.
These should be hours for necessities, Not for
delights. --Shak.
What was once to me Mere matter of the fancy, now
has grown The vast necessity of heart and life.
--Tennyson.
4. That which makes an act or an event unavoidable;
irresistible force; overruling power; compulsion, physical
or moral; fate; fatality.
So spake the fiend, and with necessity, The tyrant's
plea, excused his devilish deeds. --Milton.
5. (Metaph.) The negation of freedom in voluntary action; the
subjection of all phenomena, whether material or
spiritual, to inevitable causation; necessitarianism.
{Of necessity}, by necessary consequence; by compulsion, or
irresistible power; perforce.