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exigency

UK/ˈɛksɪd͡ʒənsi/US/ˈɛɡzəd͡ʒənsi/
nounC2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechToo rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

Other forms: exigencies

An exigency is an urgent demand created by the situation. The exigencies of war.

It is what the circumstances require rather than what anybody has chosen. An exigency is the standard justification for doing something nobody would defend in calm times.

Definitions of exigency

  1. 1nounexigencyAn urgent demand created by the situation.C2

    “The exigency of the moment settled the argument.”

exigency is a demand.

Where it comes from

Latin exigentia, from exigere, to demand or drive out, which also gives exact and exigent.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *h₂eǵ-

  2. Latin

    exigentia — urgency

  3. Middle French

    exigence

  4. English, today

    exigency

Built from

  • exigere · Latin — to demand

From Middle French exigence, from Latin exigentia (“urgency”) (from exigēns + -ia), from exigere (“to demand”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

exigency in the wild

  • A sense of exigency is found in the poems, imploring the body to live according to the soul's fate and not the desires of the flesh.

    Soul and Body

  • Species belonging to this genus have been demonstrated to cause illness of varying exigency in humans if raw or under cooked infected fish is consumed.

    Pseudoterranova

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.