Urgent means requiring immediate attention or action because delay could cause problems. When something is urgent, it can't wait until later without risk or consequence.

A doctor treating an urgent medical case must act quickly because the patient's condition could worsen without immediate care. When a teacher says she has an urgent announcement, she means everyone needs to listen right now, not after recess. If your parents describe a phone call as urgent, they're explaining why they had to interrupt dinner to answer it.

The word carries a sense of pressure and importance combined. Not everything important is urgent: studying for a test next month is important but not urgent. But studying tonight for tomorrow's test is both important and urgent. Some things are urgent without being particularly important, like when your friend texts saying it's “urgent” but really just wants to know what you're wearing tomorrow.

People sometimes use urgently to emphasize how quickly something needs to happen: “We need to leave for the airport urgently” means right this second, not in ten minutes. Learning to distinguish between what's truly urgent and what merely feels pressing helps you stay calm and make good decisions when real urgency strikes.