noun, masculine/menesˈteɾ/plural: menesteres
something necessary, requirement, must; duty
“Es menester que actuemos con prontitud.” — It is necessary for us to act swiftly.
Inherited from Old Spanish menester, mester, inherited from Latin ministerium, with an irregular loss of the expected final -o. Coromines and Pascual explain this loss as due to being commonly found in the phrase es menester que, triggering syncope between -ter(o) and que, also arguing against the possibility of an Occitan borrowing due to the word being of "popular" semantics and being found early and in all kinds of texts. Doublet of ministerio.