Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Requiring immediate action or remedy. See Synonyms at urgent.
- adj. Requiring much effort or expense; demanding.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Urgently requiring: exacting.
- n. An urgent occasion; an occasion that calls for immediate aid or action; an exigency.
- n. End; extremity.
- n. In English law, formerly, a writ preliminary to outlawry, which lay where the defendant could not be found, or after a return of non est inventus on former writs.
Wiktionary
- adj. Urgent; needing immediate action.
- adj. Demanding; needing great effort.
- n. archaic Extremity; end; limit; pressing urgency
- n. obsolete, UK, law The name of a writ in proceedings before outlawry.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Exacting or requiring immediate aid or action; pressing; critical.
- n. obsolete Exigency; pressing necessity; decisive moment.
- n. (o. Eng. Law) The name of a writ in proceedings before outlawry.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. requiring precise accuracy
- adj. demanding attention
Etymologies
- From Latin exigēns, present active participle of exigō ("demand, require"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin exigēns, exigent-, present participle of exigere, to demand; see exact. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“For his own system he claims the merit of establishing an invariable mode of causality, namely, that in every case by the sacrament validly received there is conferred a "title exigent of grace".”
“A couple things, have you ever heard of the word exigent?”
“Sacraments are practical signs of an intentional order: they manifest God's intention to give spiritual benefits; this manifestation of the Divine intention is a title exigent of grace (op. cit., 59 sq., 123 sq.”
“(d) All admit that the sacraments are, in some sense, the instrumental causes either of grace itself or of something else which will be a "title exigent of grace" (infra e).”
“BELL: Now, under the law, police may enter a home without knocking if certain so-called exigent circumstances exist.”
“The third area addressed by the inspector general relates to what is called exigent (ph) letters.”
“Well, that is very similar to the situation of the cop who hears screams from a house and doesn’t have time to go get a warrant †it’s called exigent circumstances and it can authorize action without a warrant in those kind of pressing circumstances.”
“These so-called exigent letters, which were often used when no emergency actually existed, were an extralegal contrivance that violated ECPA, bureau policy, and guidelines issued by the attorney general.”
“The inspector general's previous reports concluded the FBI's use of the so-called exigent letters circumvented the requirements of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and violated the attorney general's guidelines and FBI policy.”
“In fact, the real number is 2,200 illegal requests out of a total of 4,400 so-called exigent requests, the”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘exigent’.
-
501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
-
Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
-
New words
new words or spelling issues
voluble, Metagrobolize, salubrious, calumny, fugacity, withdrawal, bourse, hypertrophy, leitmotif, argot, improvident, damask and 241 more...
-
words 1
Traduce, Ramify, precipitous, rapture, adumbrate, knell, smolder, vagary, choleric, sibylline, hypocritical, jejune and 135 more...
-
501
Classic
abhor, mirth, obtuse, iota, vex, irk, teem, pith, moot, mete, ire, bane and 401 more...
-
GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
-
SAT Words
But only the ones that I don't already know.
abase, abash, abominate, abstruse, acclivity, accolade, accost, adroit, adulate, adulterate, adumbrate, affray and 241 more...
-
From reading
Collected from reading
venerate, reprobate, reticent, adoration, ethereal, ephemeral, equivocal, contumacious, heinous, solicitous, agnostic, aberration and 335 more...
-
501
Classic
irk, teem, blight, pith, moot, mete, ire, bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado and 401 more...
-
501
Classic
bane, bilk, boor, elan, ado, toil, onus, aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august and 401 more...
-
Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
-
GRE
predilection, explicit, appeal, supplication, appealing, enchanting, ovation, pertinent, apropos, opportunely, applicable, germane and 381 more...
-
Burroughs
Detestable words
purulence, bête noire, exigent, exculpate, desideratum, lucriferous, concomitant, pertinacious, pervicacious, gemütlichkeit, sublimate, sanfroid and 38 more...
-
March 2012
panache, evanescent, erogenous, vestibule, malfeasance, lacuna, blithering, incubate, breech, tabernacle, pearly, upholstery and 79 more...
-
man gre
abase, abeyance, abreast, abscission, abscond, abyss, accede, accretion, acerbic, acidulous, acumen, adulterate and 483 more...
-
Remember Not To Forget
Sephardic, Umwelt, amphiboly, untrammeled, sequela, pandiculation, tensegrity, syncretism, pugilism, shemagh, disquisition, perspicacity and 65 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for exigent.
chained_bear "No news was good news for a short time yet, and I welcomed the immediate realities of triage and treatment as a refuge from imagination.
Nothing else looked exigent. Men were still straggling in... If any of them needed me, she would call."
—Diana Gabaldon, The Fiery Cross (NY: Bantam Dell, 2001), 905 Jan 26, 2010