need

Etymology

The noun is inherited from Middle English nede,^[2][3] inherited from Old English nīed in the West Saxon dialect, Mercian nēd,^[4][5][6] from Proto-Germanic *naudiz (“need, compulsion, distress”).^[4][7] It is cognate with Old Frisian nēd, Old Saxon nōd, Dutch nood, Old High German nōt (German Not), Old Norse nauð and Gothic 𐌽𐌰𐌿𐌸𐍃 (nauþs, “need, compulsion”), and outside Germanic with Old Prussian nautin (“need, distress”).^[8][5][4][9] The OED thinks it perhaps comes from a variant of the base seen in Old English nēobedd (“deathbed”), Old Norse nár (“corpse”) and Gothic 𐌽𐌰𐌿𐍃 (naus, “dead person”);^[8] Etymonline likewise starts from a root meaning "death, to be exhausted", found only in Germanic, Celtic and Balto-Slavic and so perhaps from a substrate,^[4] and Barnhart compares Welsh newyn (“famine”).^[5] The common Old English feminine form nēod arose, according to the OED, from confusion with a frequent Old English noun of that spelling meaning desire, earnestness or zeal.^[8] The verb is inherited from Middle English neden, inherited from Old English nēodian (“to be necessary”), from the noun.^{[4][5][10][11]}

Earliest recorded meaning

Violence, force or compulsion, in early Old English; this sense lasted until 1530.^[8][4] Barnhart's first record, for "necessity, compulsion, want", is the Mercian nēd in Andreas, probably about 750.^[5]

Semantic evolution

Ayto notes that the word's relatives outside English show a darker past, in which the stress lay on distress and hardship rather than on simply wanting something,^[9] and German Not still means "misery, danger, emergency".^[9] In Old English the commoner word for "need, want" was þearf.^[4] From the 12th century need meant the lack of something necessary;^[4] the sense "extreme poverty" is from the early 14th century.^[4] The Old English verb meant "to be necessary"; personal uses with a subject who needs something grew later,^[8][11] helped by the phrase have need to and by the loss of the old verb tharf.^[8] With an infinitive it is recorded from about 1385, in Chaucer.^[8] From the late 14th century it also expressed obligation in negative and interrogative sentences.^[4] There it came to behave like a modal verb, without -s and without do: he need not go, need I go?^[8][12] An older verb, to compel or force, built on the same Germanic base, died out about 1500.^[8][2] The adverb needs, of necessity, recorded from 1131, comes from the genitive of the noun.^[5][13] Johnson (1755) defined the noun first as "exigency; pressing difficulty; necessity".^[14] The phrase need-to-know dates from 1952, and who needs it? from about 1960, a translated Yiddishism.^[4]

Timeline

• early Old English – violence, force, compulsion (obsolete by 1530).^[8]
• c. 750 – necessity, compulsion, want.^[5]
• c. 960 – verb, to be necessary.^[5][4]
• 1131 – adverb needs, of necessity.^[5]
• c. 1200 – nede and neden, in the Ormulum.^[5]
• 12th century – lack of something necessary.^[4]
• early 14th century – extreme poverty.^[4]
• c. 1385 – verb with an infinitive, in Chaucer.^[8]
• late 14th century – to be under obligation, in negative and interrogative sentences.^[4]
• 1952 – need-to-know.^[4]

Meanings

Noun

1. A lack of something wanted or necessary: They had need of fresh water.^[12][10]
2. Something required; a requirement: the needs of a growing family.^[12][10]
3. Necessity or obligation arising from a situation: There's no need to hurry.^[12][10]
4. A time of difficulty or distress: a friend in need.^[12][11]
5. Extreme poverty; destitution.^[12][10]
6. (obsolete, Old English–1530) Violence, force, compulsion.^[8][11]

Verb

1. To be in want of; to require: The garden needs rain.^[12][10]
2. To be obliged to do something: We need to leave by six.^[12][10]
3. As a modal verb, without to and without -s, in negative and interrogative sentences: Need he come?^[12][8]
4. (archaic) To be necessary.^[12][11]

Word family

• needer
• needful
• neediness
• needless
• needy
• unneeded

Related words

• needs

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
3. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.