neediness

1. 1.

   a state of extreme poverty

   Synonymsprivationwantdeprivation

   Broaderpoverty
2. 2.

   the quality of needing attention and affection and reassurance to a marked degree

   “he recognized her neediness but had no time to respond to it”

   Broaderquality

Other forms of neediness

plural

needinesses·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about neediness

What does neediness mean?

neediness means "a state of extreme poverty". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in neediness?

neediness has 3 syllables: nee-di-ness. The stress falls on "nee".

What is another word for neediness?

Close synonyms include privation, want, deprivation. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is neediness a common word?

neediness is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.