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unessential. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
unessential, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
unessential in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
unessential you have here. The definition of the word
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English
Etymology
From un- + essential.
Adjective
unessential (comparative more unessential, superlative most unessential)
- Not essential.
- Synonyms: inessential, unimportant
- Antonym: essential
- 1676, Joseph Glanvill, Seasonable Reflections and Discourses, London: R.W. H. Mortlock, p. 92,
- have a question more to ask you on occasion of what you have told me; and that is, Whether you are to leave every Minister and Church, as soon as any thing is said that is really erroneous, in the lesser and unessential matters?
- 1716, Joseph Addison, The Free-Holder, No. 39, 4 May, 1716, London: D. Midwinter and J. Tonson, p. 225,
- moved rather with Pity than Indignation towards the Persons of those, who differed from him in the unessential Parts of Christianity.
1886 May – 1887 April, Thomas Hardy, chapter 18, in The Woodlanders , volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:“ […] strangeness is not in the nature of a thing, but in its relation to something extrinsic—in this case an unessential observer.”
- Void of essence, or real being.
- Synonym: unsubstantial
1667, John Milton, “Book II”, in Paradise Lost. , London: [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker ; nd by Robert Boulter ; nd Matthias Walker, , →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: , London: Basil Montagu Pickering , 1873, →OCLC, lines 438-441:These past, if any pass, the void profound
Of unessential Night receives him next
Wide gaping, and with utter loss of being
Threatens him,
1686, William Hall, A sermon preach'd before Her Majesty the Queen Dowager, London: William Grantham, page 7:[…] even before the Heavens, before those material Orbs, that now rowl over us, were call’d from the dark, and profound Abyss of unessential Nothing:
Derived terms
See also