Also found in: Thesaurus.


1. Necessary; required: needful repairs.
2. Being in need of something: "The mother ... is attracted, distracted, needful of the outside world just when the child requires her to be focused, steady, home" (Anne Roiphe).
(used with a pl. verb) Needy people considered as a group: programs that provided jobs for the needful.

need′ful·ly adv.
need′ful·ness n.
ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:
Adv.1.needfully - in an essential manner; "such expenses are necessarily incurred"
References in periodicals archive ?
Lacking in sense of dwelling--understood according to the language of bioregionalism as needfully inhabiting a place with one's full psychic and sensorial engagement (Sale 2000, 5-7)--Dubin has difficulty experiencing such complete rooted sense of dwelling-in-place even in America.
For Milton's Adam, companionship is the primary need Eve fulfills and Milton asserts that "a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and noblest end of marriage" (The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce 249), giving "the mutual enjoyment of that which the wanting soul needfully seeks" (254).
While the characters are needfully sketched in broad strokes, keeping true to the fairy tale style, A Pocketful Of Crows never feels infantile or patronising and sits perfectly within Harris' catalogue of eerie, beguiling tales.

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