Word.ws English Dictionary

special needs

special needs noun: needs for special care, services or accommodations for people with disabilities.

Noun

special needs pl (plural only)

  1. (euphemistic, idiomatic, plural, plural-only) Needs for special care, services or accommodations for people with disabilities.
    • The school has introduced provisions for pupils with special needs.
  2. (plural, plural-only) Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see special, needs.
    • Am I really hard to please?
      Perhaps I have such special needs
      I wondered what was wrong with me
      My friends all fall so easily1975-6, “I Thought It Took a Little Time (But Today I Fell in Love)”, performed by Diana Ross

Adjective

special needs (comparative more special needs, superlative most special needs)

  1. (euphemistic, idiomatic) Having special needs (noun sense 1).

Forms of special needs

comparativemore special needs
superlativemost special needs

Questions about special needs

What does special needs mean?
Special needs means needs for special care, services or accommodations for people with disabilities.
What part of speech is special needs?
Special needs can be a noun or an adjective.

Words near special needs in the dictionary

  1. special military operations
  2. special move
  3. special moves
  4. special name
  5. special names
  6. special needs
  7. Special Olympian
  8. Special Olympians
  9. Special Olympics
  10. special omelette
  11. special operation

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: special needs (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-special needs.ogg.

Cite this entry: “special needs.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/special_needs. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.