About

Do the Needful is an expression meaning "do what is necessary" which is often associated with South Asians expressing trust in another to perform a task without instruction.

Origin

In 1709, the British literary and society journal The Tatler was launched by Irish writer Richard Steele. The phrase "advise the needful" is contained within Volume 2^[19] of the journal:

"If you want any further particulars of ditto alderman, daughter, or cat, let me know, and per first will advise the needful: which concludes your loving friend, Lemuel Leger."

The expression "do the needful" was later adopted in South Asian English, commonly found in various business correspondences. In 1987, The New York Times^[4] published an article titled "On Language; Doing the Needful," which discussed the use of the expression in Indian English.

Spread

On May 25th, 2006, "kindly do the needful" was mentioned in a forum post about Indian English submitted to The Straight Dope Forums.^[2]

On August 22nd, 2014, Redditor bitcycle submitted a post titled "Do the needful?" to /r/sysadmin,^[18] which described the use of the term at customer service centers in India. On April 5th, 2015, YouTuber sanjaycomedy uploaded a parody song titled "Please Do the Needful" (shown below).

On January 4th, 2016, The Guardian^[1] published an article referring to "do the needful" as the "granddaddy of all Indianisms."

On July 12th, 2017, "doing the needful" was included in a CNN^[20] article titled "India sayings can add a twist to English – here are 10 classic Indianisms." On January 30th, 2018, Urban Dictionary user Willy submitted an entry for "do the needful" (shown below).

Search Interest

External References