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Must needs? When did this happen?

Perhaps a half-dozen times in the past week, I’ve read sentences with contain the phrase “must needs.” I have never considered this construction before; frankly, it sounds totally bizarre to my inner ear (my spiritual inner ear, that is).

Thus, it must needs be that I’ve been teleported to another world, a world in which the English language developed differently than it did in the world from which I came. This tiny grammatical gem is the only evidence of my true origin.

Comments

Comment from Van
Time: December 27, 2006, 7:16 pm

I think the phrase dates back at least to Elizabethan times; I recall it from a monologue by Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. A quick Google search reveals its occurrence in Pericles, King John, Henry VI part 2, King Lear, Troilus and Cressida, Timon of Athens, and The Merchant of Venice as well.

O Bardless World from which you teleport!
(Pardon the iambic pentameter.)

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