Definition of "necessary" []

• Absolutely essential. See Synonyms at indispensable. (adjective)
• Needed to achieve a certain result or effect; requisite: the necessary tools. (adjective)
• Unavoidably determined by prior conditions or circumstances; inevitable: the necessary results of overindulgence. (adjective)
• Logically inevitable. (adjective)
• Required by obligation, compulsion, or convention: made the necessary apologies. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Prayer as the highest that can be lived on earth, telling Martha that activity, even in the most necessary duties, was not after all the best use to which time and love could be put, but rather that _Mary had chosen the best part ... the one thing that is necessary_, and that it"
• "It is not necessary absolutely that any man should continue to live; but it is necessary _morally_ that, if he would continue to live, he should eat and sleep, food and rest being, according to the established constitution of Nature, a _necessary condition_ or indispensable means for the support of life."
• "She kept telling me that I could have it (the necessary procedure) done as an in-patient procedure and then I could just be sterilized "while we're in there" at the same time, and it wouldn't hurt (as opposed to having the * necessary* procedure done in-office that she assured me would really hurt)."