must needs

Amy West medievalist at W-STS.COM
Fri Jan 18 15:59:10 UTC 2008


In doing a cold read of a colleague's MS, I just read "must needs
bring" yesterday in a passage from Lyly's Endymion.

---Amy West

>verb _must_). In _must needs_, the analysis I have heard is that
>_needs_ is from an adverbial use of the genitive noun (which was far
>more common in older English), so should be understood as "of
>necessity".
>
>Barbara

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