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essential. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
essential, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
essential in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
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English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Late Latin essentiālis, from Latin essentia (“being, essence”).
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ɪˈsɛn.ʃəl/,
- Hyphenation: es‧sen‧tial
Adjective
essential (comparative more essential, superlative most essential)
- Necessary.
- Synonyms: indispensable; see also Thesaurus:requisite
- Antonyms: accidental, accessorial, incidental, unnecessary, unneeded
1941, Theodore Roethke, “Feud”, in Open House; republished in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, 1975, →ISBN, page 4:There’s canker at the root, your seed
Denies the blessing of the sun,
The light essential to your need.
Your hopes are murdered and undone.
2018, Clarence Green, James Lambert, “Advancing disciplinary literacy through English for academic purposes: Discipline-specific wordlists, collocations and word families for eight secondary subjects”, in Journal of English for Academic Purposes, volume 35, →DOI, page 105:Thus, research-based resources with the potential to assist teachers prepare secondary students for tertiary education are essential.
- Very important; of high importance.
- Synonyms: crucial; see also Thesaurus:important
- Antonyms: unimportant; see also Thesaurus:insignificant
2013 May 17, George Monbiot, “Money just makes the rich suffer”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 23, page 19:In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. The welfare state is dismantled. Essential public services are cut so that the rich may pay less tax. […]
- (biology) Necessary for survival but not synthesized by the organism, thus needing to be ingested.
- Being in the basic form; showing its essence.
- Synonyms: see Thesaurus:intrinsic, Thesaurus:bare-bones
- Antonyms: adscititious; see also Thesaurus:extrinsic
Don’t mind him being grumpy. That’s the essential Fred.
- Really existing; existent.
- Synonyms: see Thesaurus:existent
- Antonyms: see Thesaurus:inexistent
1612–1613 (date written), John Webster, The Tragedy of the Dutchesse of Malfy. , London: Nicholas Okes, for Iohn Waterson, , published 1623, →OCLC, Act III, scene ii:Or is it true, that thou art but a bare name, / And no eſſential thing?
- (geometry) Such that each complementary region is irreducible, the boundary of each complementary region is incompressible by disks and monogons in the complementary region, and no leaf is a sphere or a torus bounding a solid torus in the manifold.
- The template Template:rfex does not use the parameter(s):
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- (medicine) Idiopathic.
essential blepharospasm
- Having the nature of essence; not physical.
1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “In which Three Investigators Come across a Dark Soul”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019:It is usually allowed that there is the natural body, as St. Paul called it, which is dissolved at death, and the etheric or spiritual body which survives and functions upon an etheric plane. Those are the essential things. But we may really have as many coats as an onion and there may be a mental body which may shed itself at any spot where great mental or emotional strain has been experienced.
Antonyms
Derived terms
Translations
necessary
- Azerbaijani: labüd (az), zəruri, vacib (az)
- Belarusian: неабхо́дны (be) (njeabxódny)
- Bengali: প্রয়োজন (bn) (proẏōjon), ফরজ (bn) (phoroj), দরকার (bn) (dorkar)
- Bulgarian: необходи́м (bg) (neobhodím)
- Catalan: essencial (ca)
- Chinese:
- Mandarin: 必要 (zh) (bìyào), 不可缺的 (bùkě quē de), 必備/必备 (zh) (bìbèi)
- Czech: nepostradatelný m, esenciální, nezbytný (cs) m, nevyhnutelný (cs) m
- Dutch: essentieel (nl), onontbeerlijk (nl), wezenlijk (nl), noodzakelijk (nl), nodig (nl), onmisbaar (nl)
- Estonian: vajalik
- Finnish: olennainen (fi), tärkeä (fi), tarpeellinen (fi)
- Georgian: აუცილებელი (aucilebeli), არსებითი (ka) (arsebiti)
- German: essenziell (de), notwendig (de), unverzichtbar (de)
- Indonesian: esensial (id)
- Irish: riachtanach
- Italian: necessario (it), indispensabile (it)
- Japanese: 不可欠な (ja) (ふかけつな, fukaketsu na)
- Korean: 필수적인 (pilsujeogin)
- Maltese: essenzjali
- Norwegian:
- Bokmål: essensiell
- Nynorsk: essensiell
- Polish: niezbędny (pl) m
- Portuguese: essencial (pt)
- Romanian: necesar (ro) m or n
- Russian: необходи́мый (ru) (neobxodímyj)
- Scottish Gaelic: deatamach, riatanach
- Slovak: nutný
- Slovene: bistven, nujen
- Spanish: esencial (es)
- Swedish: nödvändig (sv)
- Tamil: அவசியமான (avaciyamāṉa)
- Ukrainian: необхі́дний (neobxídnyj)
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of high importance
- Azerbaijani: vacib (az), əhəmiyyətli (az)
- Belarusian: ва́жны (vážny), істо́тны (istótny)
- Belarusian: অতি জরুরি
- Bulgarian: ва́жен (bg) (vážen), съще́ствен (bg) (sǎštéstven)
- Catalan: essencial (ca)
- Chinese:
- Mandarin: 要素 (zh) (yàosù), 切要 (zh) (qièyào)
- Czech: zásadní (cs), esenciální, nejpodstatnější, nejdůležitější (cs), hlavní (cs)
- Dutch: essentieel (nl), onontbeerlijk (nl), wezenlijk (nl), belangrijk (nl)
- Estonian: oluline (et)
- Finnish: olennainen (fi), välttämätön (fi), elintärkeä, oleellinen (fi)
- French: indispensable (fr)
- Georgian: აუცილებელი (aucilebeli), არსებითი (ka) (arsebiti)
- German: wesentlich (de), unentbehrlich (de), unverzichtbar (de)
- Ido: esencala (io)
- Indonesian: esensial (id)
- Italian: essenziale (it), fondamentale (it)
- Japanese: 肝要 (ja) (かんよう, kan'yō)
- Maltese: essenzjali
- Maori: waiwai
- Polish: zasadniczy (pl) m
- Portuguese: essencial (pt)
- Romanian: esențial (ro), important (ro)
- Russian: ва́жный (ru) (vážnyj), суще́ственный (ru) (suščéstvennyj)
- Scottish Gaelic: deatamach, riatanach
- Slovak: kľúčový
- Slovene: bistven
- Swedish: essentiell (sv)
- Tamil: இன்றியமையாத (iṉṟiyamaiyāta)
- Ukrainian: важли́вий (uk) (važlývyj), істо́тний (istótnyj)
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Translations to be checked
Noun
essential (plural essentials)
- A necessary ingredient.
- Synonym: must-have
- A fundamental ingredient.
- (Can we add an example for this sense?)
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