These word all mean to wish for or to desire something, or to consider it, for some reason, absolutely necessary. Require is the mildest, most formal and most general of these. It might be used for a simple statement of things necessary for a given task: an expansion of duties that would require a doubling of floor space and the engaging of six more typists. It can be used also to state, somewhat dispassionately, more fundamental necessities: organisms that require water as surely as food and oxygen.

Need theoretically indicates the requiring of an absolute essential: plants that need sun in order to live. But the word, while more informal than require , can often be used for intense desire of what may not, after all, be a matter of life and death: He swore that he needed her love more than anything on earth. And the word can often be used hyperbolically for the slightest wish: needing a new hat every other week. Lack stresses the idea of need by emphasizing the absence of the thing desired: a city that lacks a good library; a marriage lacking in tranquility and simple friendliness. On the other hand, the word can, oddly enough, be used to express the absence of negative values: a play completely lacking in digressions or wasted motion. Want is now most commonly used for the direct, personal expression of desire: the lady who wanted her salad without dressing; what most over-indulged children want. In this sense, the amount of need expressed is not necessarily very intense. In an older use, however, the word can express severe need or lack : a people who wanted for the very necessities of life; soldiers wanting boots but marching on, all the same, through ice and snow.