need

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A condition or situation in which something is required or wanted: crops in need of water; a need for affection.
2. n. Something required or wanted; a requisite: "Those of us who led the charge for these women's issues ... shared a common vision in the needs of women” ( Olympia Snowe).
3. n. Necessity; obligation: There is no need for you to go.
4. n. A condition of poverty or misfortune: The family is in dire need.
5. v. To be under the necessity of or the obligation to: They need not come.
6. v. To have need of; require: The family needs money. See Synonyms at lack.
7. v. To be in need or want.
8. v. To be necessary.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The lack of something that is necessary or important; urgent want; necessity.
2. n. Specifically, want of the means of subsistence; destitution; poverty; indigence; distress; privation.
3. n. Time of want; exigency; emergency: as, “a friend in need is a friend indeed.”
4. n. That which is needful; something necessary to be done.
5. n. A perilous extremity.
6. n. Synonyms Necessity, Need (see necessity and exigency) emergency, strait, extremity, distress.
7. n. Want, Indigence, etc. See poverty.
8. To have necessity or need for; want; lack; require.
9. Synonyms Ward, etc. See lack.
10. To be wanted; be necessary: used impersonally.
11. Needs; necessarily.

Wiktionary

1. n. countable and uncountable A requirement for something.
2. n. Something required.
3. v. obsolete To be necessary (to someone).
4. v. transitive To have an absolute requirement for.
5. v. transitive To want strongly; to feel that one must have something.
6. v. modal verb To be obliged or required (to do something).

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A state that requires supply or relief; pressing occasion for something; necessity; urgent want.
2. n. Want of the means of subsistence; poverty; indigence; destitution.
3. n. obsolete That which is needful; anything necessary to be done; (pl.) necessary things; business.
4. n. obsolete Situation of need; peril; danger.
5. v. To be in want of; to have cause or occasion for; to lack; to require, as supply or relief.
6. v. To be wanted; to be necessary.
7. adv. obsolete Of necessity. See needs.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a condition requiring relief
2. n. anything that is necessary but lacking
3. n. a state of extreme poverty or destitution
4. v. have need of
5. v. require as useful, just, or proper
6. v. have or feel a need for
7. n. the psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a desired goal; the reason for the action; that which gives purpose and direction to behavior