Word of the Day: Exigency

“An urgent need or demand.” 

As in, “women worked long hours when the exigencies of the family economy demanded it.”  This, according to google’s definition, Oxford. And an ‘interesting’ choice to exemplify the sentiment.

I heard this word in a documentary last week about Alfred Hitchcock. 78/52. One director said “Hitchcock knew the meaning of exigency in the 1940’s and 1950’s”. An urgent need or demand for change. Psycho, for example, changed cinema as well as culture. 

As in, “Norman Bates’ knife was the primal force that tore through the repressive ’50s blandness just as potently as Elvis had. Sure, Norman was a maniac serial killer dressed in his mother’s Victorian rags, but when he slashed that knife, he brought down a world of civilized propriety that needed to be brought down.” John Hudson, the Atlantic

The conformity of the 1950, particularly with women, changed. It needed to be changed.  It needed to be brought down.
How does one recognize exigency today? Education needs to be changed. It needs to be brought down. 

As in, “ when (some) students and teachers recognized the exigency of education, they stopped working long hours and flourished.”  Flourished more, then less. 

Exigency: Pronounced like Exit and Emergency combined. Poignant.