Essential

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ɪˈsÉ›n.ʃəl/
• Hyphenation: es + sen + tial

Origin

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

Full definition of essential

Adjective

1. Necessary.
2. Very important; of high importance.
• 2013-05-17, George Monbiot, Money just makes the rich suffer, 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. Being in the basic form; showing its essence.Don’t mind him being grumpy. That’s the essential Fred.
4. Really existing; existent.
• Webster (1623)Is it true, that thou art but a name,
  And no essential thing?
5. (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.
6. (medicine) Idiopathic.

Synonyms

• indispensable, crucial, substantive

Antonyms

• inessential, unessential, accidental, nonessential, unneeded, adscititious, unimportant, accessorial, unnecessary, incidental

Derived terms

Noun

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

Related terms

• essence