Timeline for "Need be" vs. "Needs to be"
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 13, 2016 at 5:40 | vote | accept | jared | ||
| Oct 22, 2015 at 22:57 | history | edited | Colin Fine | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Clarify that I was exemplifying the syntax, not paraphrasing
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| Oct 22, 2015 at 22:55 | comment | added | Colin Fine | Sure. I was using can be only as a syntactic parallel: I didn't mean to suggest that it was similar in meaning. I'll edit to show this. | |
| Oct 21, 2015 at 0:34 | comment | added | moismailzai | Excellent point, my mind automatically jumped to the idiomatic usage. That being said, "need be" denotes necessity and "can be" denotes either limit or option, no? That is, doesn't the usage "need be" express that "the necessary 'amount of sway' that the balance requires is 'slight'"; whereas the usage "can be" expresses that "the degree to which it is possible to 'sway the balance' is 'slight'"? That is, the first formulation tells us what is the threshold and the second formulation tells us what is the limit. | |
| Oct 20, 2015 at 23:54 | history | answered | Colin Fine | CC BY-SA 3.0 |