Needed
verbPast tense of 'need': required something, or had to do something.
How to spell needed
6 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce needed
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does needed mean?
- verbPast tense of 'need': required something, or had to do something.
Needed in a sentence
-
The project needed more funding than the team had expected.
-
She needed a quiet room in order to finish the report.
Where does needed come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
This is the past tense of the verb 'need', which descends from the Old English noun nēd or nēod, meaning 'necessity', 'compulsion', or 'distress'. The same root spread widely across the Germanic languages, surfacing as Dutch 'nood' and German 'Not', all carrying the idea of urgent want or hardship. In early English the word could describe genuine emergency or duress, but over the centuries the sense softened into the everyday meaning of simply requiring or wanting something. The verb form developed alongside the noun, and the regular past tense was created by adding the standard '-ed' ending. Because the base word 'need' already ends in a single 'd', writers sometimes hesitate over how many 'd' letters belong in 'needed', though the answer is just two: the root 'need' plus the suffix.
How the word is built
- need (Old English nēd: necessity, requirement)
- -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)
Fix your spelling for good.
Spelling Garden finds the words you personally get wrong, plants them in a garden, and brings each one back just before you would have forgotten it.
Just five minutes a day is all it takes to fix your spelling.