Talk:must needs

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Initial[edit]

Hello, I started this definition because I found it in my readings and was interested in it. I decided to be bold. This is the first wiki page I created. I would like to thank the editors on the page so for adding their input. I was looking to link this to needs but a landscaper killed my coaxial cable and I lost power. THX for getting in and completing the hyperlink, i was unsure how to do it, and the handling of needs musts was more concise. Two things First, Archaic Vs. Dated. Must need sill in use in contemporary literature (Melville, swift, or most recently George RR Martin). Under the talkpage http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Obsolete_and_archaic_terms it is clearly not Old English, but I don't believe it to be outdated. They list gay and groovy as outdated terms. I also hear from my Mother 'keen' and 'gear' and recognise these as outdated. But must needs seems to be so outdated that a previous generation might not encounter it, which is why I labeled it as archaic. To be honest I use 'boughten' as the past participle of buy, and by correlation I decided that must needs falls in the same category. If not for Melville or swift I would have never picked up on the term; it is a term in use in contemporary literature, much like thou, which is archaic. I will of course acquiesce to the consensus, but I just want to state that archaic seems more appropriate than dated. Second, I have a couple of other examples other than the devil drives example. I shall wait a short while for commentary, then absent any, or approval, I will add them. Thx, Im loving this. Suiciderun 06:06, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

SOP[edit]

See needs 83.216.94.11 16:57, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tea Room discussion[edit]

Wiktionary:Tea_room/2018/September#needs_must. - -sche (discuss) 17:36, 12 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

RFD discussion: September–November 2018[edit]

The following information passed a request for deletion (permalink).

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

As an IP noted on the talk page, this is SOP. Per utramque cavernam 20:21, 10 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm flabbergasted by the amount of support BD's comment has garnered. "it will be difficult for readers to understand the meaning by looking up the individual terms." > says who? Why would a reader be unable to go to the needs entry, and make sense of must needs by himself? Per utramque cavernam 07:55, 12 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Might the lemming test apply? I note that the entry does not appear in the Merriam–Webster or OED, but perhaps other dictionaries have it? — SGconlaw (talk) 10:21, 12 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I always wondered where on Wiktionary this usage is noted, because I had not found out how this phrase should be analyzed. Now we see that many are not sure, hence it has not been included. I would be content though with having an extra entry at needs and hard redirecting the formations with must; this is what I do: it’s so when a word exists only in phrase but the phrase does not have a canonical composition, just appears frequently with certain verbs so people look it up with and without extra words, so with кур (kur), which is used as дѣлать кому-то куры (dělatʹ komu-to kury), дѣлать кому-то куръ (dělatʹ komu-to kur), строить куръ (stroitʹ kur) … (guess the rest). But the thing is SOP albeit set phrase. Fay Freak (talk) 11:04, 12 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect or delete and add usage notes to "must" and "needs". I remember looking this up on Wiktionary a couple years ago, and I didn't even think to look at "needs," but once I did, it made sense, and I have since encountered it outside of the phrase "must needs." If we had the structure for it, I would definitely support keeping it as a collocation, but as it stands, it's simply an SOP phrase. Note also the Tea Room conversation, where the phrase "needs must" (meaning the same thing) is addressed, further indicating that "must needs" is SOP. (However, I could be convinced that it should be kept on the grounds that "needs" became obsolete long before "must needs," if that is in fact the case). Andrew Sheedy (talk) 14:21, 12 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that "needs" can be used not only in either order here ("needs must", "must needs") but also in other expressions like "wilt thou needs be a beggar" as pointed out in Wiktionary:Tea_room/2018/September#needs_must, suggests that this is indeed SOP. Redirecting it to the relevant sense of needs seems like a fine solution. - -sche (discuss) 17:37, 12 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Redirect to needs. — SGconlaw (talk) 02:52, 13 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Notwithstanding the possibility of redirection or the mention of a phrase at the entries for its constituent words, I believe that generally speaking we should have separate entries for set phrases that are likely to be significantly difficult to understand from the definitions of their parts, even if strictly they are SoP. I would say that "must needs" is likely to be significantly difficult for most modern readers to understand from "must" and "needs", and should therefore be included if it is deemed a set phrase. However, if it is determined that "must needs" is not a set phrase after all, but just a regular usage of "needs", then obviously this argument would not apply. Mihia (talk) 20:21, 13 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Once upon a time the adverb needs was used with some regularity, but always in combination with either the verb must or the verb will. For another example of the latter, take Genesis 19:9 in the King James Version: “And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them.” But the combination with will appears to have become obsolete towards the end of the 19th century, when it was already archaic. If, in present-day use, the adverb needs can only be used in combination with the verb must, one can hardly consider that combination to be SoP. The correct analysis is not at all obvious. I do recall my kind of a doing a double take the first time I ran into the collocation. I thought this was a typo or other error left by sloppy editing. Only when I encountered it again did I realize I needed to look it up, which was not easy at the time – Albert Arnold Gore Jr. had not yet invented the Internet. As can be seen from the discussion at the Tea house, even experienced Wiktionary contributors may think that needs in this combination is the plural of the noun need. And it looks like they were not the only ones; there is also the collocation must of needs, which appears to mean the same, but here I analyze the adverbial clause as the preposition of + the plural noun needs. The most likely explanation is that in the historic development of was inserted to fix a collocation that felt grammatically wrong, because it was no longer understood what part of speech needs was.  --Lambiam 22:34, 13 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Lambiam, I'm curious about the collocation "will needs be" in the example you gave. I'm also used to the expression, "if needs be", which I've always understood as the "needs" being the plural noun again, as a kind of archaic grammar for "if there be needs". But parsed as an adverb, it would presumably work out to "if it be necessary". ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 00:06, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Next to if needs be there is also the more common if need be. [Aside. I place you as a speaker of American English, but I thought the version if needs be is predominantly British English.] In these expressions, be is in the (archaic) subjunctive mode, just as in if truth be told, underscoring the hypothetical character of the clause. In either case, I too analyze need(s) as being the subject, a singular or plural noun. Interpreting needs as an adverb and replacing it by a synonym leaves us with the ungrammatical *if necessarily be.  --Lambiam 10:59, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Lambiam: Re: AmE / BrE, I grew up on the US east coast, of family that has been in the US for generations. That said, as with language and families in general, I know there are a few oddities in how my family uses the language, including oddball dialect like snit to refer to any tiny amount (a sense missing from our entry) and shinta (never seen it written, nor heard it from anyone other than family) to refer specifically to the two mostly-crust end-slices of a loaf of bread, both probably from or cognate with standard German Schnitte (“slice”).
Re: needs as an adverb in needs be, I grant that a simple replacement with adverb synonym necessarily doesn't parse as terribly grammatical, but then neither does needs must, where the needs has been explained as an archaic adverbial. Perhaps this is due to diachronic shift in usage patterns, and what looks (from a modern perspective) like omission of it: if needs be → if [it] necessarily be. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │Tala við mig 16:09, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
If the word needs in the phrase needs must, when standing on its own, is interpreted as an adverb, the phrase is ungrammatical: where is the subject of the verb? However, as I argue at the Tea room, the phrase is elliptic for He needs must go when the devil drives. (See also here.)
As to if need(s) be, if the phrase is a later variant of if it need(s) be, one should expect that longer form to show up earlier than if need(s) be. However, that appears not to be the case. Here are a few early occurrences of if need be:
  • 1602: A Discovrse vpon the Meanes of VVel Governing, an English translation of Discours sur les moyens de bien gouverner by Innocent Gentillet, also known as the Anti-Machiavelli;
  • 1635: An Answer to the Unjust Complaints by John Paget, a pamphlet (called a “broadside” in Wikipedia) against John Canne;
  • 1691: The Forerunner to a Further Answer, a pamphlet against Calvinism by Thomas Grantham, in which it is used parenthetically in the title.
We also find the variant if need shall be here, in 1659. Here the insertion of it does not work: *if it need shall be. That said, if it need be is perfectly grammatical and can be expected to be found used in its own right, as it is here, in a 1652 book on orcharding.  --Lambiam 22:34, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not convinced enough to make it a keep vote, but I wasn't aware this was SoP until it was pointed out. It's always been a strange "set phrase" to me. Equinox ◑ 23:39, 13 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
comment: the following, on GBC, each have greater than 1k (and some closer to 100k)
  • must needs go
  • must needs do
  • must needs become
  • must needs choose
  • must needs form
…and of course, must needs be with upwards of 1.6 million. But just to check: …go, …do, and …be all are found on Google News, published within the past few weeks. It does not seem to be an archaic or obsolete set phrase. - Amgine/ t·e 00:26, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Any recent instances that you found will be quotations or deliberate archaisms. Remember also that the large counts that you see at the top of Google's results pages are just Very Large Random Numbers™. Mihia (talk) 00:38, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In what way does that change the modern use into "archaic or obsolete"? Sure a set phrase is used to invoke a mood or semblance, because it is recognized by the [modern] audience as doing so. - Amgine/ t·e 02:49, 14 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I said "archaism", which is a bit different from "archaic or obsolete", but different again, I would say, from true modern usage. Mihia (talk) 20:56, 17 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Let me put it another way: if modern readers understand the phrase, and it is in current use (however qualified that use), should it not be in Wiktionary? - Amgine/ t·e 21:06, 21 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
My feeling is that it should be included if it is viewed as a set phrase (which, per above, may be disputed), but that there should be some label to show that it is not "ordinary" modern usage. Mihia (talk) 01:17, 24 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Some relevant {{R:GNV}} searches: must needs do, must needs become, must needs choose, must needs form at Google Ngram Viewer; must needs, will needs, needs must at Google Ngram Viewer. --Dan Polansky (talk) 12:03, 23 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose, even if "needs" could formerly be used more generally, this would still pass the "once upon a time"/"much ado about nothing" test as one of the only (archaic) survivals of it. Keep on that basis. - -sche (discuss) 04:26, 30 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]


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