needing

Pluralneedings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of need.

   The project kept needing revisions right up to the deadline.

   Needing extra income, she took a second job.

   Note

   The -ing form belongs to the full verb, the one that takes an object or a to-infinitive: needing help, needing to leave. The modal use, as in need not go, has no participle. Because need mostly describes a state, the progressive is uncommon, and needing turns up more often opening a clause or as a gerund. The same spelling also serves the noun meaning a need, which even takes a plural.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   Something that is required or lacking; a need.

   Note

   A noun formed straight from the verb, and a countable one: it takes the plural needings. Daniel Turner's The Ancient Physician's Legacy Impartially Survey'd (1733) uses it of bodily urges, children's "Needings to the urinary Excretion", with to introducing what the need is for. It sits beside the shorter noun need, which carries the same meaning of something required.

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