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Definitions

need

[need] / nid /






Usage

What are other ways to say need? The verb need often suggests urgency, stressing the necessity of supplying what is lacking: to need an operation, better food, a match to light the fire. Require, which expresses necessity as strongly as need, occurs most frequently in serious or formal contexts: Your presence at the hearing is required. Successful experimentation requires careful attention to detail. Lack means to be without or to have less than a desirable quantity of something: to lack courage, sufficient money, enough members to make a quorum. 

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

“The last thing we need is to have a pole fall onto someone or something if there are high winds,” the bureau’s Clinton Tsurui wrote in the June 4, 2025, email.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 9, 2026

We need not admire him politically to agree that Reagan was good at that sort of thing.

From Salon • Jun. 9, 2026

Even with "a substantial apprenticeship programme", he said his company could not train everyone they needed, and would need to turn to France, Germany or Poland to find personnel.

From Barron's • Jun. 9, 2026

We don’t need the money, but additional funds are always helpful.

From MarketWatch • Jun. 9, 2026

“What’s wrong with you? Didn’t we say that since you and I would be headed for college in only two years, Dad would need someone?”

From "Split the Sky" by Marie Arnold




Vocabulary lists containing need


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