What does requisition mean?
A requisition is a formal request for resources needed by an organization or individual. The term is commonly associated with military and administrative paperwork: a department may submit a personnel requisition, a purchasing office may issue a purchase requisition, or an emergency agency may requisition vehicles, supplies, or buildings. As a verb, “to requisition” means to request such resources officially or, in historical and military contexts, to take them for public use. Unlike an ordinary request, a requisition usually follows an institutional procedure and is intended to obtain necessary personnel, equipment, supplies, or funds. The word is consequently formal and often bureaucratic, but its older sense of commandeering property can carry a more demanding or coercive implication. It remains useful for describing the formal mechanisms through which organizations procure what they need.
A formal request for personnel, supplies, equipment, funds, or other resources, or the document or process used to make such a request.
"The school submitted a requisition for additional classroom materials."
Used especially in military, governmental, institutional, and business administration.
The official taking or commandeering of property or other resources for public, military, or emergency use.
"The requisition of the building was authorized by the district governor."
This older sense often suggests compulsory or compulsory-seeming appropriation.
To request supplies, personnel, equipment, or other resources formally, or to take them officially for use.
"The relief agency requisitioned generators and temporary shelters."
The verb is formal and is common in administrative, military, and emergency-response contexts.
The plural is used for individual formal requests or official acts of requisitioning resources.
"The departments submitted separate requisitions for equipment and personnel."
Requisition comes from the Latin for “asking for again,” a fitting origin for a formal demand that cannot simply be ignored.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Where does requisition come from?
Requisition comes through Old French from Latin requisitio, a noun meaning “a seeking for” or “demand.” The underlying Latin verb requirere combined re-, meaning “again,” with quaerere, meaning “to seek or ask for.” The same Latin root produced words such as require, requisite, and acquire. In English, requisition developed both the modern sense of a formal request for resources and the older sense of an official demand or taking of property.
Related word forms
How requisition is actually used
The word is chiefly used in formal, institutional, military, legal, and administrative contexts. It can sound bureaucratic, while the historical sense of taking resources by official authority may carry a more coercive or adverse connotation.
Easily confused with requisition
A request is a general act of asking for something, whereas a requisition is typically a formal institutional or administrative request for resources.
To require something is to impose or state that it is necessary; to requisition something is formally to request or take it for use.