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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.

Both see a need to move homeless people into housing, and both have said that Measure ULA, the city’s tax on high-end property sales, needs to be rewritten to spur apartment construction.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 10, 2026

He added: "We need a mandatory minimum fine of £20,000 and, again, vehicle forfeiture on conviction."

From BBC • Jun. 10, 2026

But you don’t need to be from Mexico to understand the significance, reverence, and trepidation that surround this hulking pile nicknamed El Coloso de Santa Úrsula.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 10, 2026

“I just need to be patient,” Lee says about the bluebird box, which is still empty.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 10, 2026

“Yes. I need a distraction. Can you think of a better one than a party?”

From "Split the Sky" by Marie Arnold




Vocabulary lists containing need


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