necessarily

[ nes-uh-sair-uh-lee, -ser- ]

adverb

1. by or of necessity; as a matter of compulsion or requirement:

   You don't necessarily have to attend.

2. as a necessary, logical, or inevitable result:

   That conclusion doesn't necessarily follow.

necessarily

/ ˌnɛsɪˈsɛrɪlɪ; ˈnɛsɪsərɪlɪ /

adverb

1. as an inevitable or natural consequence

   girls do not necessarily like dolls

2. as a certainty

   he won't necessarily come

Word History and Origins

Origin of necessarily¹

late Middle English word dating back to 1400–50; necessary, -ly

Example Sentences

Meanwhile, support for progressive policies doesn’t necessarily translate to enthusiasm for mainstream Democratic candidates.

From FiveThirtyEight

Again, people don’t necessarily know how the military operates.

From ProPublica

The change reflects a growing concern at the Fed that in recessions, inflation often falls far below 2%, but it doesn’t necessarily reach 2% when the economy is expanding.

From Fortune

That’s not necessarily a critique of this paper, though, says Boykoff.

From Popular-Science

What the models are telling us now — what they’ve always been telling us — is not, necessarily, the job we asked them to do at the beginning of this pandemic.

From FiveThirtyEight

It's not necessarily a deal-breaker, but it is kind of a top priority.

From The Daily Beast

Detention facilities would not necessarily have to keep up with U.S. prison standards.

From The Daily Beast

Nor do Turkers necessarily want a traditional union, Salehi noted.

From The Daily Beast

America, Stephens writes, is not necessarily in “decline” but rather “retreat.”

From The Daily Beast

To “link up the beachheads and peg out claims well inland” was necessarily the first aim of Overlord.

From The Daily Beast

Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe: evil spreads as necessarily as disease.

From Project Gutenberg

Such mutual distrust necessarily creates or accompanies a lack of moral courage.

From Project Gutenberg

The three groups necessarily include all in the community who circulate money.

From Project Gutenberg

Necessarily, therefore, Americans were beginning to manufacture their own cloth, which they could very well do.

From Project Gutenberg

Since he had decided to 'slip out' this attitude towards his cousin was necessarily involved.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• automatically
• naturally
• no doubt
• undoubtedly
• unquestionably