Word.ws English Dictionary

needed not

needed not is the simple past of need not.

Meaning of need not

Verb

need not (third-person singular simple present need not, no present participle, simple past needed not, no past participle)

  1. (UK, auxiliary, no-past-participle, no-present-participle) Indicating absence of necessity; needn't, do(es) not have to, do(es) not need to.
    • My example illustrates how circularity can arise in arguments that appeal to experiment. But the very same example serves to show that this need not be the case.2013, Alan Chalmers, What is this thing called Science?, University of Queensland Press, page 36
    Synonyms:
    not have to, needn't
  2. (auxiliary, dated, no-past-participle, no-present-participle) Indicating inadvisability; ought not to.
    • Want ads for what little manual labor there was frequently had the stipulation INNA, an acronym for Italians and Irish Need Not Apply.2018 June 1, Gerard Letterie, “Education is the beacon that lights our path forward in America”, in The Seattle Times

Questions about needed not

What is needed not the simple past of?
Needed not is the simple past of need not.

Words near needed not in the dictionary

  1. needcessity
  2. neede
  3. needed
  4. needed more time in the oven
  5. needed no introduction
  6. needed not
  7. needed one's bumps feeling
  8. needed one's bumps felt
  9. needed one's eyes checked
  10. needed one's head examined
  11. needed to

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: needed not (page history and authors); need not (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “needed not.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/needed_not. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.