Thread: must needs

I read "Gulliver's Travels" and I've noticed that Swift sometimes uses this expresion, for example
"Upon the whole, the behaviour of these animals was so orderly and rational <...> that I at last concluded they must needs be magicians..."

Then I came across this in other writings, for example
We Must Needs Go Through Samaria

I understand, of course, more or less the meaning of this expression, as well as I presume it to be the old-fashioned one, but I'm still in doubt of its grammatical construction.

What do you think of it?

BTW, what's the difference between "colt and foal"; "nag and horses"?

Originally Posted by Propp

I read "Gulliver's Travels" and I've noticed that Swift sometimes uses this expresion, for example
"Upon the whole, the behaviour of these animals was so orderly and rational <...> that I at last concluded they must needs be magicians..."

Then I came across this in other writings, for example
We Must Needs Go Through Samaria

I understand, of course, more or less the meaning of this expression, as well as I presume it to be the old-fashioned one, but I'm still in doubt of its grammatical construction.

What do you think of it?

BTW, what's the difference between "colt and foal"; "nag and horses"?

A colt, I believe, is a male infant horse, while a foal can be either gender. A filly is a female infant horse. At least, that's the way we've always used the terms on our farm. A nag is a broken-down, slow old horse - like Don Quixote's Rocinante - while "horse" is just a neutral term.

I've never heard or read anyone modern using "must needs," but I have heard "need must," for example, "We need must round up these damn cows before they're in the next county." I have no idea how normal this is; everyone I know talks funny.

Incidentally, after a year, a foal is no longer really called a "foal," it's called a "yearling." After two years it's not a yearling, of course, it's gotta be called either just a "colt," "filly," or "gelding," or simply a "two-year-old." By three most Western-type horses are pretty much grown up. I've noticed that people still tend to call three-year-old female horses "fillies," but seldom call males "colts" after three years of age. Probably for the same reason a 22-year-old girl is still a "girl" (NOT THAT I'M IRRITATED BY THAT OR ANYTHING ) while you'd never call a 22-year-old guy a "boy."

For whatever reason, a two-year-old may be called a "two-year-old," but a three-year-old is generally not called a "three-year-old." This is because horse people are crazy.

Mature horses (generally, for Western horses and Thoroughbreds that's three or four years old, while draft breeds and some of the European horses like Andalusians take a few more years) are called "studs" or "stallions" (if they're uncastrated males), mares (if they're female) or geldings (if they're castrated males). An immature gelding is still called a "gelding," but an immature female or full male horse is generally not called a "mare" or "stallion."

I think equestrians make this complicated on purpose. You should hear the names of some of the harness equipment My favorite is the "surcingle."

In my opinion, geldings make the best riding horses. My lifetime favorite riding horse is a gelding. Ironically, he's named "Playboy."

One of mine is Playboy

From Random House:

needs (n?dz) adv.
of necessity; necessarily (usually prec. or fol. by must)

So needs here is an adverb.

I saw similar definitions in other good dictionaries as well.

BTW there is an expression in English 'Needs must when the devil drives'. It means you feel compelled to do something even when you really don't want to.

Thanx a lot.
And after that Dogboy complains that Russian language has too many words. It is English that has them. In fact, I always noticed that in English they have several words for everyday usage with, say, 50-100 meanings on the one hand, and several thousands special words with one very particular meaning, derived from Greek, Latin and French from the other hand (the majority of which are unknown to everyday speaker). Russian generally has words with 2-4 meanings without these extremes.

Everyone's favourite multi-definition word has to be "set." It has literally hundreds of meanings. I think it's three-hundred-and-something but I can't remember exactly.

The real hit is "to get".

But if you include all phrasal verbs with get, it'd be like including all the prefixed forms with, say, идти .. and that would be ahelluvalot. Right?

'Must needs' I think is a colloquialism (common language) for 'have to' perhaps?

We Must Needs Go Through Samaria
We Need To Go Through Samaria