essential

From Late Latin essentialis, from Latin essentia (“being, essence”).

• IPA^(key): /ɪˈsɛn.ʃəl/, [əˈsɛn.tʃəl]

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• Hyphenation: es‧sen‧tial

essential (comparative more essential, superlative most essential)

1. Necessary.
2. Very important; of high importance.
   • 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. […]

3. (biology) necessary for survival but not synthesized by the organism, thus needing to be ingested
4. Being in the basic form; showing its essence.

   Don’t mind him being grumpy. That’s the essential Fred.

5. Really existing; existent.
   • Webster (1623)

     Is it true, that thou art but a name, / And no essential thing?

6. (of a lamination of a 3-manifold) 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.

   (Can we add an example for this sense?)

7. (medicine) Idiopathic.

• (necessary): indispensable; See also Thesaurus:requisite
• (of high importance): crucial; See also Thesaurus:important
• (in the basic form): See also Thesaurus:intrinsic or Thesaurus:bare-bones
• (really existing): existent; See also Thesaurus:existent

• (necessary): accidental, accessorial, incidental, unnecessary, unneeded
• (of high importance): unimportant; See also Thesaurus:insignificant
• (in the basic form): adscititious; See also Thesaurus:extrinsic
• (really existing): See also Thesaurus:inexistent
• (all senses): inessential, unessential, nonessential

essential (plural essentials)

1. A necessary ingredient.
2. A fundamental ingredient.

(Can we add an example for this sense?)

• essence

• siletanes

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /esˈsen.ti.aːl/, [ɛsˈsɛn.ti.aːɫ]

essentiāl n (genitive essentiālis); third declension

1. essentials (essential qualities)

Third declension neuter.

• proessential
• supraessential
• superessential
• essentialis