Needs

How to spell needs

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce needs

What does needs mean?

1. nounThe things that are required or wanted in order to live or function.
2. verbThird-person singular form of need: requires something as essential.

Needs in a sentence

• noun

  The charity helps families meet their basic needs for food and shelter.

• verb

  The car needs a new battery before winter.

• noun

  A good manager listens to the needs of the whole team.

• verb

  She needs approval from her supervisor before booking the trip.

Where does needs come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English noun 'nied' (also spelled 'nead'), which meant necessity, compulsion, or hardship, and from the related verb 'neodian', to be necessary or to require. It belongs to a wider family of Germanic words, with close relatives in Old Saxon and Old High German that all carried the sense of force or distress as much as simple requirement. In its earliest English use the word could describe genuine peril or constraint, which is why old phrases like 'in time of need' still carry that weight. Over the centuries the harsher sense of compulsion softened into the everyday meaning of something required or wanted. The modern '-s' is the ordinary inflection, marking either a plural of the noun or the third-person singular of the verb, so the spelling stays pleasingly regular and rarely trips writers up.

How the word is built

• need (Old English nied: necessity, requirement)
• -s (plural/third-person verb ending)