needed
verb
Form of need , past tense of need.
Simple meaning
To have an absolute requirement for.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
needuhdSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈnidəd
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
verb
past tense of need
To have an absolute requirement for.
past tense of need
To want strongly; to feel that one must have something.
past tense of need
Have need of
past tense of need
To be required; to be necessary.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: To have an absolute requirement for.
Used this way, needed is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Require as useful, just, or proper.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Needy people collectively.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
According to need (physicians use PRN in writing prescriptions).
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.