Word of the Day

: November 14, 2023

exigent

adjective EK-suh-junt

What It Means

Exigent is a formal word that describes things that need to be dealt with immediately, as well as people who expect significant time, attention, effort, etc. from other people.

// The warrantless search of the property was permitted because of exigent circumstances.

// He struggled to satisfy the needs of the exigent client.

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exigent in Context

"People don't tend to reveal their true selves while careening across a landscape. Unless, of course, civilization has ended—a cheap setup that, I must begrudgingly admit, motivates character development in an exigent way. The most famous literary and filmic specimen that focuses, as games do, on spatial traversal amid existential threat is Lord of the Rings—which, of course, exerted a strong influence on the development of games in the first place." — Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 29 Jan. 2023

Did You Know?

Exigent is a formal word with meanings closely tied to its Latin forbear, exigere, meaning "to demand." Exigent things and people demand attention—for example, an exigent client expects so much that they are hard to satisfy, and exigent circumstances are so significant that they can be used to justify certain police actions without the warrant typically required. Before exigent joined the language in the early 1600s, the noun exigency was being used to refer to something that is necessary in a particular situation—for example, the exigencies of an emergency situation might require that certain usual precautions be ignored. That word dates to the late 1500s, but even earlier, in the mid-1400s, exigence was on the scene doing the same job. All three words—exigent, exigency, and exigence—continue to meet the demands of English users, albeit not frequently in everyday conversation.