Re: CHAT: Must Needs? (WAS: Lighting Some Flames: Towards conlang artistry)

At 10:56 am +0000 19/3/02, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
>> Date:         Tue, 19 Mar 2002 06:20:23 +0000
>> From: Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
>>
>> If its inevitable that you do a certain action, then you _need_ to
>> do it. The connexion in meaning is fairly clear, but as for the
>> morphology, I don't know.
>
>www.m-w.com:
>
>Main Entry:     needs
>Pronunciation:  'nEdz
>Function:       adverb
>Etymology:      Middle English nedes, from Old English nEdes, from
>                genitive of nEd need
>Date:           before 12th century
>                : of necessity : NECESSARILY <must needs be recognized>
Thanks - I thought "needs" might've originated from some fossilized
inflected form.   :)

So 'must needs' = 'must of necessity'/'must necessarily'

That precisely the way I use the phrase!  One thing is certain, "must
needs" is _not_ an old way of just saying _must_; the two are not
synonymous, otherwise when I use "must", I could also say "must needs".
This is definitely not so.

Arguably, when I say "must needs", I could just say "must" (tho with some
loss of meaning); but the reverse is simply not true.

Ray,
the archaic speaker from Sussex  :)

=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                     [J.G. Hamann 1760]
=========================================