NEED • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Need

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/nid/ Listen

verb

Need v. t. (past & past part. needed; pres. part. needing) To be in want of; to have cause or occasion for; to lack; to require, as supply or relief. "Other creatures all day long Rove idle, unemployed, and less need rest." Note: With another verb, need is used like an auxiliary, generally in a negative sentence expressing requirement or obligation, and in this use it undergoes no change of termination in the third person singular of the present tense. "And the lender need not fear he shall be injured."

Need v. i. To be wanted; to be necessary. "When we have done it, we have done all that is in our power, and all that needs."

noun

Need n.

A state that requires supply or relief; pressing occasion for something; necessity; urgent want. "And the city had no need of the sun." "I have no need to beg." "Be governed by your needs, not by your fancy."

Want of the means of subsistence; poverty; indigence; destitution. "Famine is in thy cheeks; Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes."

That which is needful; anything necessary to be done; (pl.) necessary things; business. (Obs.)

Situation of need; peril; danger. (Obs.)

Synonyms: Exigency; emergency; strait; extremity; necessity; distress; destitution; poverty; indigence; want; penury. Need, Necessity. Necessity is stronger than need; it places us under positive compulsion. We are frequently under the necessity of going without that of which we stand very greatly in need. It is also with the corresponding adjectives; necessitous circumstances imply the direct pressure of suffering; needy circumstances, the want of aid or relief.

adverb

Need adv. Of necessity. See Needs. (Obs.)

See images of 'Need'

Etymology of 'Need'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Need" Quotes from Famous Books

... me that it can only give me pleasure when you are affectionate enough to treat me as a friend; and for the rest, nobody need apologise for taking another into the vineyards—least Miss Bayley and yourself to me. At the first thought I felt sure that there must be a great deal about vines in these Greeks of ours, and am surprised, I confess, in turning from one to another, ...

— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... else I must tell you. I didn't see any need to bother you with it before. It's this. Mr. Dick Guiseley proposed to me when he ...

— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... all you need in the dining-room. I directed Masters to leave ample there, in case the detectives ...

— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... Galwegian thought this reasonable, because in this region the rent, it appears, is only collected once a year. With this impartial temper, my Galwegian still maintained that but for the two priests—the parish priest of Gweedore and the curate of Falcarragh—there need have been no trouble at Falcarragh. There had been no "evictions." When the tenants first went to Mr. Olphert they asked a reduction of 4s. in the pound on the non-judicial rents, and this Mr. Olphert at once agreed to give them. The tenants had regularly paid their rents ...

— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... nothing like a well-fought resistance in the early stages of invalidism. Keep up the will, and if need be the temper. There are times when to grow heavenly is fatal,—when one is to let the soul run loose, and to gather up the gritty determination of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who, when told that she must be blistered or die, exclaimed, "I won't be blistered, and I won't die!" Indeed, it is ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

More quotes...