Q: In the Game of Thrones TV series, Tywin Lannister says to his son, Tyrion, “You’ll bring that boy-king to heel, and his mother too, if needs be.” Why is “if needs be” constructed with the singular verb “needs.”
A: The word “need” can be a noun, a verb, or an adverb. It’s a noun meaning a “necessity” or an “obligation” in the expression “if need be.” But it’s an adverb meaning “of necessity” or “necessarily” in “if needs be.”
Both expressions have been around for centuries, and are generally used in the sense of “if it’s necessary” or “if necessary.”
By far the most common version of the expression is “if need be,” according to Google’s Ngram viewer, which compares words and phrases in digitized books. It’s more common in both American and British English, though “if needs be” appears somewhat more often in the UK than in the US.
HBO’s Game of Thrones series is based on A Song of Ice and Fire, a series of fantasy novels by the American author George R. R. Martin. A scene similar to the one you describe appears in the second of the novels, A Clash of Kings, but the scene doesn’t include either “if need be” or “if needs be.”
The American writers David Benioff and D. B. Weiss created the TV version for HBO, and their scripts use both forms of the expression in various places.
Brienne of Tarth, for example, tells Lady Sansa that she has vowed to “give my life for yours if need be.” And as you point out, Tywin Lannister tells his son, Tyrion, “You’ll bring that boy-king to heel, and his mother too, if needs be.”
As for the etymology, the Oxford English Dictionary cites an early version of “if need be” from an Old English translation (circa 900) of Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (“Ecclesiastical History of the English People”), an eighth-century Latin church history by the Anglo-Saxon monk Bede:
“Þa symbelnesse to mærsienne mæssesonges, gif þæt ned abædeð” (“Then to celebrate the feast with the singing of Mass, if the need requires it”).
The earliest example we’ve found for the usual wording, though not the usual spelling, is from Fragment C of The Romaunt of the Rose, a Middle English translation of an Old French allegorical romance:
“Sende aftir hir, if nede be.” From a translation, believed written in the 1360s, of the French Le Roman de la Rose (circa 1230), by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. Fragment C is in Chaucer’s style, though it’s not believed to have been written by him.
The earliest citation in the OED citation for this wording is from the late 14th century: “Haue þo torches redy to brynge hym with to cherche, ȝif nede be” (“Have those torches ready to bring him to church, if need be”). From A Book of London English, 1384-1425, edited by Raymond Wilson Chambers and Marjorie Daunt in 1931.
Now on to the other version of the expression–“if needs be,” the adverbial form. The earliest example we’ve seen is from a 17th-century collection of statutes: “all the towne or townes adioyning if needs be.” From A Collection in English of the Statutes Now in Force (1621), printed for the Societie of Stationers, London.
By the way, a post about “needs must” that we published in 2017 cites “if needs must,” an adverbial expression that, like “if needs be,” means “if it’s necessary” or “if necessary.” It also explains in more detail how “needs” came to be an adverb.
We’ll end with an example of “if need be” that we’ve found in one of our favorite novels, Trollope’s Barchester Towers (1857). This passage describes the ambitious, hypocritical, and sycophantic clergyman Obadiah Slope:
“Though he can stoop to fawn, and stoop low indeed, if need be, he has still within him the power to assume the tyrant; and with the power he has certainly the wish.”
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