needles

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of needle.

   Fallen pine needles covered the forest floor in a soft brown layer.

   Acupuncture needles are far thinner than the hypodermic kind.

   Note

   One regular plural serves every kind of needle: sewing and knitting needles, hypodermic and acupuncture needles, pointed crystals and pinnacles of rock, the slender leaves of conifers, and the indicators on dials. Builders have their own use as well. For them, needles are strong beams set on props to hold a structure up during repairs. Only context tells a forest floor of needles from a scaffold of them.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of needle.

   Whenever they meet, she needles him about losing the bet.

   The columnist needles politicians with sharp, pointed questions.

   Note

   The present-tense form behind sly, persistent teasing: she needles him, the columnist needles politicians. In that provoking sense it always takes a direct object, so someone is always needled. The shape-forming sense can also stand without one. It is spelled exactly like the plural noun, and position tells them apart: a subject comes before the verb, and an object follows it.

3. 3
   adjectiveobsolete

   Obsolete spelling of needless.

   Note

   A relic of early modern spelling with no connection to the sewing needle. Here needles is simply needless written with one final s. Around 1588, Robert Browne complains of "superstitious & needles cærimonies" in ordination. In an old text, needles placed before a noun means unnecessary. In modern writing the same spelling reads as a mistake, so write needless.

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