Word.ws English Dictionary

ananke

/əˈnæŋki/

ananke noun: necessity beyond all supplications or sway. Conceived as the ultimate dictator of all fate and circumstances, to which even the gods must ultimately pay homage and deference.

Noun

ananke (uncountable)

  1. Necessity beyond all supplications or sway. Conceived as the ultimate dictator of all fate and circumstances, to which even the gods must ultimately pay homage and deference.

Proper noun capitalized: Ananke

Ananke

  1. (Greek) A Greek goddess, personification of destiny, necessity and fate, depicted as holding a spindle.
    • “‘To tell you that the eternities beget chaos, and that the immensities are at the mercy of the divine ananke. Infinitude crouches before a personality. The mercurial essence is the prime mover in spirituality, and the thinker is powerless before the pulsating inanity. The cosmical procession is...1886, Arthur Conan Doyle, Cyprian Overbeck Wells. A Literary Mosaic
  2. A moon of Jupiter.

ananke meaning in Tamil

ananke in Tamil

கட்டாயநிலை, தேவை

Origin of ananke

From Ancient Greek ἀνάγκη (anánkē, “necessity”).

From Ancient Greek Ἀνάγκη (Anánkē, “Fate”).

Questions about ananke

What does ananke mean?
Ananke means necessity beyond all supplications or sway. Conceived as the ultimate dictator of all fate and circumstances, to which even the gods must ultimately pay homage and deference.
What is ananke in Tamil?
Ananke in Tamil is கட்டாயநிலை, தேவை. See Ananke meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is ananke?
Ananke can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce ananke?
Ananke is pronounced /əˈnæŋki/.

Words near ananke in the dictionary

  1. Ananites
  2. Ananiv
  3. anankastia
  4. anankastic
  5. anankastics
  6. ananke
  7. Anankean
  8. Ananse
  9. Anansi
  10. Anansy
  11. Anant

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ananke (page history and authors); Ananke (page history and authors); ananke (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Persent101-ananke.wav.

Cite this entry: “ananke.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ananke. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.