The following article by Chris Tribble discusses the uses of words associated with need and want in the Guardian Weekly recently.

Getting what we want ... or need?

"I need a winter coat and I can't find one to fit." This comment from an article on the Guardian Weekly's web site (Waiting for asylum in Glasgow) got me thinking about needs and wants, needing and wanting.

In this paper, the references to needs (20,161) appear to almost equally balance wants (21,101), and there is a striking overlap between the things that we are reported as needing and wanting. Looking at the top five examples from the archive, we appear to need a very limited set of basic things: help, time, money, food and support, and we appear to want the conditions which will make these things possible: including: peace, independence, children, money and things.

However, when we look at what we need to do and what we want to do, we can see a difference. While we are reported as needing to look, get, win, take and keep, we appear to want to see, to know, to do, to make and to go. Our needs are focused on competing and acquiring, but our aspirations have more to do with understanding and making.

Similarly when we look at what we need and want to be, our needs don't always match our aspirations. We need: to be aware, to be protected, to be reminded and to be convinced. We want, by contrast: to be able (to do many things), to be seen, to be part (of something), to be left (alone), remembered and named, and, more seriously, we can end up being wanted for questioning, genocide, murder, war (crimes) or crimes (against humanity).

Having looked at what this paper reports we want and need, I wondered what it says we love and hate. It's a different but associated set. Hate is found most frequently with mail, crimes, figure, campaign and speech, while the objects of hate most frequently reported in this paper are Jews and America (although this is often in the context of love/hate relationships).

As we might expect, love keeps different company. It is most frequently found with the nouns affair, story, letter, songs and triangle, while the things that we are reported as loving include sex, neighbour, literature, wife and child. All a bit different from a new winter coat.