Needing

How to spell needing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce needing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does needing mean?

1. verbThe present participle of need: requiring something because it is necessary or essential.

Needing in a sentence

• The old house was clearly needing a fresh coat of paint.

• She spent the afternoon needing nothing more than rest and quiet.

Where does needing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the present participle of the verb 'need', which descends from Old English nēodian, meaning 'to be necessary' or 'to require', closely tied to the noun nēod for 'necessity' or 'distress'. The root belongs to a wider Germanic family, sharing ancestry with the Dutch nood and the German Not, both still meaning 'need' or 'emergency'. In early use the word carried a strong sense of urgent want or even peril, not merely casual requirement, so to be 'in need' once suggested real hardship. The softer modern sense of simply requiring something developed gradually through the medieval period. The -ing ending here is the ordinary participle marker, and because the base word ends in a single 'e' that is dropped before adding -ing, the spelling settles cleanly as needing.

How the word is built

• need (require, from Old English nēodian)
• -ing (present participle suffix)