Timeline for Why use "need not" instead of "do not need to"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
31 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 10, 2020 at 13:02 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | @WeaponX: No, there are several mistakes in that sentence. | |
| Jul 10, 2020 at 4:02 | comment | added | Ed_ | I thought the regular verb was with s: "He doesn't needs to call he" | |
| May 23, 2020 at 21:22 | comment | added | Minh Nghĩa | Is there a "Why need ...?" question? | |
| Jun 26, 2019 at 11:54 | history | edited | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Feb 26, 2018 at 17:00 | history | edited | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 18, 2018 at 18:02 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | @JanusBahsJacquet: OK. Done. | |
| Jan 18, 2018 at 18:02 | history | edited | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 18, 2018 at 18:01 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | Exactly—there’s even a question about it. | |
| Jan 18, 2018 at 18:01 | history | edited | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 18, 2018 at 18:00 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | @JanusBahsJacquet: Ah, so be is a subjunctive? I'll remove the example. | |
| Jan 18, 2018 at 17:30 | comment | added | Janus Bahs Jacquet | Note: the need in ‘if need(s) be’ is the noun, not the verb, so that doesn’t really fit in here. | |
| Jun 4, 2017 at 9:36 | comment | added | Carsten S | @PeterShor, German dürfen means to be allowed to (which in English is often negated as must not). | |
| Mar 18, 2017 at 15:47 | history | edited | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 15, 2016 at 23:13 | history | edited | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Dec 24, 2015 at 12:39 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | @Özgür: In general, you can use modal verbs with non-modal need (so that is need to), but in this example it doesn't sound right. I would just leave out can there. | |
| Dec 24, 2015 at 8:47 | comment | added | Özgür | Can we use another modal with "need to", " what else can we need to reach our goal?" | |
| Jun 27, 2014 at 4:19 | comment | added | Peter | There's a BrE and AmE difference, I think. Modal need or dare are more common in BrE than AmE. In BrE, it is common in negatives and interrogatives - and here we have an instance of the negative. | |
| Oct 23, 2013 at 16:41 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | @PeterShor: Damn, look what you did, you made me wander the depths of the OED and the WNT reading about all the cognates of tharf, and dare. Dare is apparently not related to tharf but was partly influenced by it. I always thought Dutch durven and English dare were cognates, but no, even despite past forms dorst and durst, respectively. | |
| Oct 23, 2013 at 15:02 | comment | added | Peter Shor | Historical note: "need not" replaced "tharf not" during Middle English. The verb tharf was also a modal used only in the negative, and is cognate with the German modal verb dürfen, meaning must. | |
| May 31, 2013 at 18:11 | comment | added | DaveBall aka user750378 | Great, now I need no longer have a bad conscience when writing phrases like "does not and need not compute ...." ;) | |
| Feb 6, 2013 at 12:03 | history | edited | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Nov 24, 2012 at 18:18 | comment | added | Peter Shor | If you put a "He" (capitalized so it goes at the beginning of a sentence) in the Ngram you get nearly the same results. I don't see how there could be any false positives in this set. | |
| Jun 10, 2011 at 18:58 | comment | added | Kosmonaut | @Peter Shor: If you have to browse through results to conclude that it seems to be used that way, then is the graph really worth anything? | |
| Jun 10, 2011 at 18:51 | comment | added | Peter Shor | @Kosmonaut: I checked a sample, and the vast majority indeed seem to be need being used as a modal verb. | |
| Jun 10, 2011 at 18:50 | vote | accept | seriousdev | ||
| Jun 10, 2011 at 18:48 | comment | added | Kosmonaut | @Peter Shor: Need is also a noun. With that ngram, you have no way of excluding things like "there is a need not to generalize". | |
| Jun 10, 2011 at 18:40 | comment | added | Peter Shor | +1 It doesn't seem that old-fashioned in the negative. Google Ngrams shows "need not" is still used much more often than either "needs not" and "does not need to". For the regular verb, you can see from the Ngram that "does not need to" is slowly replacing "needs not". | |
| Jun 10, 2011 at 17:52 | history | edited | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jun 10, 2011 at 17:40 | comment | added | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | @Rhodri: Hah, you lo—I mean, my apologies! | |
| Jun 10, 2011 at 17:37 | comment | added | user1579 | Blast, you beat me to it. The Wiktionary entry for need has some handy usage notes that explain a few more forms of the word. | |
| Jun 10, 2011 at 17:34 | history | answered | Cerberus - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 3.0 |