needs

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of need.

   The engine needs fresh oil before the long drive.

   Every plant in the greenhouse needs light and steady warmth.

   Note

   The -s appears only when need behaves as an ordinary verb, followed by an object or a to-infinitive: she needs help, he needs to leave. When need works as a modal, it drops the -s and takes a bare infinitive: he need not leave, need she know? Choosing needs or need therefore tells the reader which construction you mean.

   He needs to finish the report tonight.

   She needs a new passport before the trip.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of need.

   A good teacher adapts lessons to the different needs of each student.

   The budget balances the city's competing needs for housing and transit.

   Note

   The plural counts requirements one by one: basic needs, special needs, the needs of each student. It takes a plural verb (her needs are simple), even when the sum feels like one thing. Do not confuse it with the verb form spelled the same way, which takes a singular subject. And the -s of the archaic adverb comes from an older ending that has nothing to do with number.

   Her needs are simple: a quiet room and a good lamp.

   The town's basic needs were met before winter.

3. 3
   adverbarchaic

   Of necessity; necessarily, typically accompanied, directly or indirectly, by an auxiliary verb, most often 'must'.

   He must needs obey the king's command, however harsh it seemed.

   Vulcan was a smith as well as Harry Wynd; he would needs wed Venus, and our Chronicles tell us what came of it.

   1828, [Walter Scott], Chronicles of the Canongate

   Note

   A fossil adverb: Old English nēdes, built from the noun nīed with the adverb-making -es, so its final -s was never a plural. It leans on an auxiliary, usually must but not only. Shakespeare's The Tempest has "he needes will be Absolute Millaine", and James Ussher in 1625 writes "this must I needs tell you." Today it sounds deliberately old, so use it for period voice rather than plain modern prose.

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