exigency

in a sentence

It seemed to have no sense whatever of the exigencies of human life; it was so familiar and so public that it became, at last, the most despairingly private of cities.†  (source) James Baldwin, Another Country, 1960

Despite the exigencies of the situation, Saladin insisted that her face be properly veiled during her questioning.†  (source) Daniel Silva, The Black Widow, 2016

These widows and widowers were people with whom she had been much concerned before the Plague, but the exigencies of the dying had meant that the living, no matter they be needy, had been left to shift for themselves.†  (source) Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders, 2001

The letters he wrote to me from the Pacific—after military exigencies had separated us and he was preparing for the assault on Iwo Jima while I was still studying platoon tactics in the swamps of North Carolina—were wondrous long documents, drolly obscene and touched with a raging yet resigned hilarity which I assumed was Jack's exclusive property until I saw it miraculously resurrected years later in Catch-22.†  (source) William Styron, Sophie's Choice, 1976

T S. Eliot, in "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" (1917), has his neurotic, timorous main character say he was never cut out to be Prince Hamlet, that the most he could be is an extra, someone who could come on to fill out the numbers onstage or possibly be sacrificed to plot exigency.†  (source) Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, 2003

Part Fourth AT SHASTON "Whoso prefers either Matrimony or other Ordinance before the Good of Man and the plain Exigence of Charity, let him profess Papist, or Protestant, or what he will, he is no better than a Pharisee."†  (source) Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, 1895

The Annapolis meeting in September, 1786, recommended that the States appoint delegates to meet and consider "the situation of the United States; to devise such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render [make] the Constitution of the federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union; and to report such an act for that purpose to the United States in Congress assembled, as when agreed to by them, and afterwards confirmed by the legislature of every State, will effectually provide for the same."†  (source) James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, & John Jay, The Federalist Papers -- Modern English Edition 2, 2008

That's a temporary exigency, Manuel, one we can cope with.†  (source) Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, 1966

In such an exigence, my uncle's advice and assistance would be everything in the world; he will immediately comprehend what I must feel, and I rely upon his goodness.†  (source) Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 1813

My imagination, sternly checked by the exigencies of my profession, waxed secretly to colossal force.†  (source) Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None, 1939

"It was one of those strokes which the prospect and exigency of the times required," wrote Abigail, "and which the President determined upon without consultation."†  (source) David McCullough, John Adams, 2002

No, my designs concerning thee are such As, in an exigence resembling thine, Myself, most sure, should for myself conceive.†  (source) Homer, The Odyssey, -850 B.C.

She would never have arrived at this eminence so early in life had not the exigencies of war and the demands of the commissary department on Tara made it impossible for Ellen to spare Mammy or Dilcey or even Rosa or Teena.†  (source) Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind, 1936