requirement

requirement, requisite, prerequisite can all mean something that is regarded as necessary to the success or perfection of a thing.

Although requirement, the more general term, may be employed in place of requisite, it is the customary term when the idea to be conveyed is of something more or less arbitrarily demanded or expected, especially by those who lay down conditions (as for admission to college, for enlistment in the army or navy, for membership in a church, or for entrance into a course)

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college entrance requirements

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a list of requirements for all campers

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action was instituted ... to compel the school board to revoke the oath requirement— Clinton

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Requisite is the customary term when the stress is on the idea of something that is indispensable to the end in view, or is necessitated by a thing's nature or essence or is otherwise essential and not arbitrarily demanded

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the first requisite of literary or artistic activity, is that it shall be interesting— T. S. Eliot

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the requisites of our present social economy are capital and labor

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intellectual freedom ... is the prime requisite for a free people— Science

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Prerequisite differs from requisite only in a stress on the tjme when something becomes indispensable; it applies specifically to things which must be known, or accomplished, or acquired as preliminaries (as to the study of a subject, the doing of a kind of work, or the attainment of an end)

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answered the questions put to him by the Senators as a prerequisite to his confirmation— Current Biog.

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he possesses the prerequisite of an original poet—a percipience unifying, exact and exhilarating—Day Lewis

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