noun

• An essential condition; a thing that is absolutely necessary.

  ‘grammar and usage are the sine qua non of language teaching and learning’

  More example sentences

  • ‘The study subjects obviously are the sine qua nons of a clinical trial.’
  • ‘Adopt these strategies for putting the sine qua non of job search success - networking - to the test.’
  • ‘Clearly the first of two sine qua nons is to be able to express one calculated column in terms of another.’
  • ‘This practice, one of the sine qua nons of Hungarian rural life, has lost much of its original sacral, ritual meaning.’
  • ‘There are three sine qua nons of guerilla warfare.’

  Synonyms

  necessity, essential item, necessary item, prerequisite, requisite, requirement, need

  fundamentals, basics, rudiments, principles, first principles, foundations, preliminaries, groundwork