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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

needly.

Zealously; carefully; earnestly.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adv/ˈniːd.li/

  1. Zealously; carefully; earnestly.

    archaic
Where this word comes from

From Middle English needely, neodliche, from Old English nēodlīċe (“eagerly, earnestly, carefully, zealously, diligently, sedulously; greatly”); equivalent to need (“desire”) + -ly. Cognate with Old Saxon niudlīko (“zealously, carefully”), German niedlich (“desirable, appealing, lovely, cute”).

adv/ˈniːd.li/

  1. Necessarily; of necessity.

    archaic

  2. Urgently.

    archaic
Where this word comes from

From Middle English needely, nedelich, from Old English *nīedlīċe (“necessarily”), from nīedlīc (“necessary”); equivalent to need (“necessity, need”) + -ly. Merged with Etymology 1 above. Cognate with Middle Dutch nodelike, Middle Low German nōtliken, Middle High German nōtliche.

adj/ˈniː.dəl.i//ˈniːd.li/

  1. Like a needle or needles.

    informal
    a needly horn
Where this word comes from

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *(s)neh₁- Proto-Indo-European *-tḗr Proto-Indo-European *-trom Proto-Indo-European *-tlom Proto-Indo-European *(s)néh₁tlom Proto-Germanic *nēþlą Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Proto-Germanic *-ō Proto-Germanic *nēþlō Proto-West Germanic *nāþlu Old English nǣdl Middle English nedle English needle Proto-Indo-European *-kos Proto-Germanic *-gaz Proto-West Germanic *-g Old English -iġ Middle English -y English -y English needly From needle + -y.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.