mandatory

Pluralmandatories

1. 1
   adjective

   Required or commanded by an authority; obligatory rather than a matter of choice.

   Attendance at the safety briefing is mandatory for all new employees.

   The judge handed down a mandatory minimum sentence under the statute.

   Similarrequired, compulsory, obligatory, binding, imperative

   Oppositeoptional, elective, voluntary

   Note

   Behind the word stands someone giving orders: Late Latin mandatorius, from mandātor, "one who commands", the same family as mandate. Its natural opposites are optional and elective, and it keeps company with compulsory and obligatory. Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen's Figments of Reality (1999) shows its hard edge in a rigid system where "every action not mandatory is forbidden." In legal and regulatory prose it pairs readily with nouns, as in mandatory disclosure.

2. 2
   adjective

   Of, being, or relating to a mandate, especially a territory governed under authority granted to a state by an international body.

   The mandatory authority was obliged to administer the region for the benefit of its inhabitants.

   France exercised mandatory control over the area following the partition.

   Note

   Here the word points back to the noun mandate rather than to obligation. In a name like Mandatory Palestine it does not mean "required". It marks a territory administered under a mandate. Read it as "under mandate" and the phrase makes sense. Read it as the "obligatory" meaning and it turns into nonsense, which is the quickest way to tell the two apart.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   In disc golf, a sign or line marking a point that the disc's flight must pass on a specified side, above, or below.

   Course designers placed a mandatory near the pond to steer throws away from the water.

   He clipped a branch trying to round the mandatory on the final hole.

   Note

   Disc golf turns the adjective into a noun for the marker itself. A tree, a post or a painted line becomes a mandatory once a sign assigns it a required side. On the course, players usually clip it to mando, the casual form you will hear far more often than the full word.

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