NEEDFUL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does needful mean? 

• NEEDFUL (adjective)
  The adjective NEEDFUL has 1 sense:

1. necessary for relief or supply

  Familiarity information: NEEDFUL used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• NEEDFUL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Necessary for relief or supply

Synonyms:

needed; needful; required; requisite

Context example:

provided them with all things needful

Similar:

necessary (absolutely essential)

 Context examples 

When I remarked this, he answered:—Well, but, my friend, is it not needful that I should?

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Why should it be made a longer one than is needful?

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Catherine's answer was only “Oh!”—but it was an “Oh!” expressing everything needful: attention to his words, and perfect reliance on their truth.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

He was away faggot-cutting in the forest, but his wife, a ruddy bustling dame, found the needful garments and tied them into a bundle.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Independence was more needful than ever; the want of it at Mansfield more sensibly felt.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

The shepherd said: “If nothing more than that is needful in order to be mayor, I would get into the barrel at once.”

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Money is a needful and precious thing, and when well used, a noble thing, but I never want you to think it is the first or only prize to strive for.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

She had learnt, in the last ten minutes, more of his feelings towards Louisa, more of all his feelings than she dared to think of; and she gave herself up to the demands of the party, to the needful civilities of the moment, with exquisite, though agitated sensations.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Now, at present I am in the position of these same readers, for I hold in this hand several threads of one of the strangest cases which ever perplexed a man’s brain, and yet I lack the one or two which are needful to complete my theory.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I have seen in his face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it—to answer what he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without grimace—and it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)