A man in Del Mar, California, wonders about the expression must needs meaning “must by necessity.” Is it a regionalism, pretentious, or perhaps used just for emphasis? This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Must Needs”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, Martha. This is Judd Halenza calling from Del Mar, California.
Welcome.
Hi, Judd. How are you doing? What can we do you for?
Help me out with the word must needs. I take a newsletter from a very articulate gentleman named Dennis Gartman, and he writes a letter that comes to me every day, and it’s market-oriented, covering business, economic, and political views.
Occasionally uses the word must needs in various sentences, such as we must need pay attention to the Brexit vote, for example. And it just seems very superfluous to me.
This is a really rare phrasing, and it just basically means must by necessity. It’s kind of like saying, it’s not that we must because I think we must, it’s that situation and the world requires that we do it, so we must by necessity. I’m surprised to hear this guy saying it. I just googled him while you were talking, and he’s from North Carolina, and I think of this as a Briticism, something you’re more likely to get from a Cambridge scholar than a guy writing a financial newsletter in the United States.
Yeah, and he lives in Virginia, so I thought it was something maybe from the East Coast, obviously very American.
Yeah, I don’t think of it as as American versus British is so much as just sort of archaic.
And it’s the kind of thing that when I’ve heard it in real life, it’s been with sort of a wink-wink, you know, oh, we must needs do this.
So somebody puts on an air of propriety and formality, to use that word.
Yeah. Is that part of the tone of his writing at all in this marketing newsletter?
No, it’s actually quite the opposite.
This is him being very serious, and I think it goes back to your definition, where we really do need to pay attention to what he’s saying.
What’s interesting here is that this may surprise you that needs is not a plural noun in this phrase.
It’s actually an adverb.
It’s an archaic adverb, kind of on the same lines as, say, once or twice.
And there were a few of these.
The Oxford English Dictionary has a pretty nice note on these very archaic adverbs.
So the fact that it follows must means that needs is an adverb describing must.
So we must needfully maybe as a way to think of it, as if needful were the word that was used there.
It really jumps out at me.
It sounds like maybe he’s saying it for emphasis.
Yeah.
I don’t know.
I think he really means it, right?
It appears to me when I’ve seen it that it is definitely for emphasis.
Well, that’s the most that we know on that, Judd.
Hope that helps.
Well, thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
I enjoy your show.
And keep up the good work.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
I encounter this phrase at least monthly in one of my favorite hymns “The Way of The Cross Leads Home” (1906):
I must needs go home by the way of the cross,
There’s no other way but this;
I shall ne’er get sight of the Gates of Light,
If the way of the cross I miss.
Refrain:
The way of the cross leads home,
The way of the cross leads home;
It is sweet to know, as I onward go,
The way of the cross leads home.
I must needs go on in the blood-sprinkled way,
The path that the Savior trod,
If I ever climb to the heights sublime,
Where the soul is at home with God.
Then I bid farewell to the way of the world,
To walk in it nevermore;
For my Lord says, “Come,” and I seek my home,
Where He waits at the open door.