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NEEDFUL
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I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Necessary for relief or supply
Example:
provided them with all things needful
Synonyms:
needed; needful; required; requisite
Classified under:
Similar:
necessary (absolutely essential)
Context examples:
We have had only the rest needful for the horses; but we are both bearing it wonderfully.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
I have now recalled all that I think it needful to recall here, of this term of absence—with one reservation.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
“Yes, brother Jerome, I wish that this matter be disposed of with as little scandal as may be, and yet it is needful that the example should be a public one.”
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The needful was comprised in Mr. Morland's promise; his honour was pledged to make everything easy; and by what means their income was to be formed, whether landed property were to be resigned, or funded money made over, was a matter in which her disinterested spirit took no concern.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
Having married on a narrower income than she had been used to look forward to, she had, from the first, fancied a very strict line of economy necessary; and what was begun as a matter of prudence, soon grew into a matter of choice, as an object of that needful solicitude which there were no children to supply.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
Am I to take it that I have anything in common with him, so that we are, as it were, to stand together; or has he to gain from me some good so stupendous that my well-being is needful to him?
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
More than once, when I went there early, I had audience of him in a turn-up bedstead, with a cut in his forehead or a black eye, bearing witness to his excesses over-night (I am afraid he was quarrelsome in his drink), and he, with a shaking hand, endeavouring to find the needful shillings in one or other of the pockets of his clothes, which lay upon the floor, while his wife, with a baby in her arms and her shoes down at heel, never left off rating him.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
In the whole Company there was only one man who could read, and he fell down a well at the taking of Ventadour, which proves that the thing is not suited to a soldier, though most needful to a clerk.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Catherine was with her friend again the next day, endeavouring to support her spirits and while away the many tedious hours before the delivery of the letters; a needful exertion, for as the time of reasonable expectation drew near, Isabella became more and more desponding, and before the letter arrived, had worked herself into a state of real distress.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
That perhaps it was a little indecent that the principal registrar of all, whose duty it was to find the public, constantly resorting to this place, all needful accommodation, should be an enormous sinecurist in virtue of that post (and might be, besides, a clergyman, a pluralist, the holder of a staff in a cathedral, and what not),—while the public was put to the inconvenience of which we had a specimen every afternoon when the office was busy, and which we knew to be quite monstrous.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
