Needful. This was once often equivalent to ‘needy.’ The words, however, have in more recent times been discriminated in use, and ‘needy’ is active, and ‘needful’ passive.
These ferthinges shal be gaderid at everi moneth ende, and delid forth to the needful man in honor of Christ and his moder.—English Gilds, p. 38.
Grieve not the heart of him that is helpless, and withdraw not the gift from the needful.—Ecclus. iv. 2. Coverdale.
For thou art the poor man’s help, and strength for the needful in his necessity.—Isai. xxv. 3. Id.
Great variety of clothes have been permitted to princes and nobility, and they usually give those clothes as rewards to servants and other persons needful enough.—Bishop Taylor, Holy Living, iv. 8, 13.
Nephew. Restrained at this present to the son of a brother or a sister; but formerly of much laxer use, a grandson, or even a remoter lineal descendant. In East Anglia it is still so used in the popular language (see Nall, Dialects of the East Coast, s. v.). ‘Nephew’ in fact has undergone exactly the same change of meaning that ‘nepos’ in Latin underwent; which in the Augustan age meaning grandson, in the post-Augustan acquired the signification of ‘nephew’ in our present acceptation of that word. See ‘Niece.’
The warts, black moles, spots and freckles of fathers, not appearing at all upon their own children’s skin, begin afterwards to put forth and show themselves in their nephews, to wit, the children of their sons and daughters.—Holland, Plutarch’s Morals, p. 555.
With what intent they [the apocryphal books] were first published, those words of the nephew of Jesus do plainly enough signify: After that my grandfather Jesus had given himself to the reading of the law and the prophets, he purposed also to write something pertaining to learning and wisdom.—Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, b. v. c. 20.
If any widow have children or nephews [ἔκγονα], let them learn first to show piety at home, and to requite their parents.—1 Tim. v. 4. (A.V.)
Nice. The use of ‘nice’ in the sense of fastidious, difficult to please, still survives, indeed this is now, as in times past, the ruling notion of the word; only this ‘niceness’ is taken now much oftener in good part than in ill; nor, even when taken in an ill sense, would the word be used exactly as in the passage which follows.