Needle
nounA thin, pointed implement used for sewing, knitting, injecting, or indicating a measurement.
How to spell needle
6 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce needle
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does needle mean?
- nounA thin, pointed implement used for sewing, knitting, injecting, or indicating a measurement.
- verbTo provoke or annoy someone with persistent teasing or criticism.
Needle in a sentence
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noun
She threaded the needle before mending the torn cuff.
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verb
His colleagues liked to needle him about his terrible parking.
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noun
The nurse loaded the vaccine into a fresh needle.
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verb
She would needle her brother until he lost his temper.
Where does needle come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Needle comes straight from the Old English nǣdl, the word the Anglo-Saxons used for the slender pointed tool of sewing. It belongs to a wide Germanic family, with close cousins in Old High German nādala and modern German Nadel and Dutch naald, all going back to a Proto-Germanic form built on a root meaning 'to sew, spin, or twist together thread'. That same ancient root is linked to Latin nere, 'to spin', which shows how old the craft of making thread really is. The spelling drifted over the centuries from nǣdl through Middle English nedle to the modern needle, keeping the silent-looking but actually pronounced -le ending typical of English tool words. Because the double 'ee' is so reliably spelled here, the only real trap is remembering that final -dle rather than writing 'needel'.
How the word is built
- naed- (Old English nǣdl, a sewing implement, from a root meaning 'to sew or spin')
- -le (instrument suffix)
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