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essay
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
essay
I.noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a football/music/essay etc competition
▪ There’s a music competition in the town on June 12th.
an exam essay/script (=that someone has written during an exam)
▪ I’ve brought in some old exam scripts for us to look at.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
critical
▪ Over 500 critical essays cover directors as diverse as Peter Bogdanovich and Tom Shadyac.
▪ She has written more than 30 books of fiction, poetry and critical essays.
▪ She is the author of more than thirty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays.
▪ To what extent should Heaney's poetry be described and assessed in terms drawn from his own critical essays?
famous
▪ But Robert, on that evening, was dipping back to a famous essay by the great Cambridge economist.
introductory
▪ In his introductory essay, Vincent Scully maintains that Kahn would be disappointed by contemporary architecture and the work of his followers.
literary
▪ We argue strongly that practice in writing should not be confined to the literary essay.
▪ In a literary essay, however, you should be cautious about leaving out the actor in a passive sentence.
long
▪ The catalogue is 300 pages long with eight essays, as well as artists' biographies.
recent
▪ Take one of your recent essays and rewrite the introduction according to the pattern suggested.
▪ As the current editor of Granta, Ian Jack, pointed out in a recent essay for Conde
short
▪ The photographs are excellent, clustered with captions after an explanatory essay, or in some cases a series of short essays.
▪ The book is a haunting, 96-page anthology of poems and short essays.
▪ Write a short essay explaining your reasons.
▪ In the 1920s Pearson resumed his acting career but also began publishing short stories, essays, and journalism.
▪ For most short coursework essays, this may well be enough.
■ VERB
begin
▪ But you should begin a history essay long before you are faced with actually writing it.
▪ Amelia began to feel better-the essay she wrote on car mechanics, a course requirement, won first prize.
contain
▪ Last week's Ha'aretz newspaper contained an extraordinary essay, all the more remarkable for being published in the current climate.
▪ The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue containing two excellent essays by Rosemary Betterton and Angela McRobbie.
▪ A more quintessentially Formalist approach to narrative is contained in Shklovsky's essay on Tristram Shandy.
▪ The 400 page catalogue from Prestel Verlag contains essays by twenty-five leading archaeologists and ethnographers.
include
▪ The catalogue includes an essay by Robert Motherwell and extracts from Cornell's own diaries.
▪ Susskind Eikhl might include my essay in the anthology he was planning.
▪ They cover three detailed studies and include an extensive essay comprising 40 percent of the assessment.
▪ This original paperback includes stories, essays and poems that celebrate motherhood.
▪ This may include essays, seminar papers, seminar presentations, projects, case studies, laboratory work, performances or exhibitions.
▪ Both of these issues include an informative booklet essay.
publish
▪ A few years later Albert Camus persuaded Gallimard to publish her essays, notebooks and letters.
▪ If I could publish nine more essays, I would become a member of the Writers' Club.
▪ In the 1920s Pearson resumed his acting career but also began publishing short stories, essays, and journalism.
read
▪ The next day, she is reading another essay when he comes home from work.
▪ Ann Tabachnikov often asked students to read in class the essays they had written at home.
▪ News stories often read like editorials or essays.
write
▪ He reluctantly agreed to write the essay and then did not.
▪ Their friendship had been sealed in second grade when the entire class was asked to write essays on their fathers.
▪ It views writing essays not as a series of isolated events but as the dynamic process of developing a skill.
▪ Then write an essay that proved they understood it and explained how they reached their conclusions.
▪ It sounded fascinating so I decided to find the book to write this essay.
▪ And DeloresDelores rambled, but she wrote the most elaborate essay her teacher had yet seen her produce.
▪ BNo wonder Berlin wrote essays rather than complete books.
▪ Allen says she will give the deli to the person who writes the best essay or poem or song.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
collected works/poems/essays/edition
▪ Box sets collect music into greatest hits, anthologies, chronologies, complete collected works, best-of and worst-of packages.
▪ He took down a copy of Wordsworth's collected poems.
▪ His collected works, he said, probably fill four foot ten of shelf space.
▪ Its author Tom Holt began, if I remember right, by publishing his collected poems at the age of 12.
▪ Mr Zhivkov's 44-volume collected works has disappeared from Sofia's bookshops since he was removed.
▪ My collected works rendered the Horsehead Nebula, goofy space cruisers, robots, and Saturn.
▪ They were first printed by William Caxton in 1475; the collected works were first illustrated by William Thynne in 1532.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ An essay differs in form from a poem.
▪ But you should begin a history essay long before you are faced with actually writing it.
▪ Exercises were devised to help students test their comprehension of the materials either by essay or by solving concrete problems.
▪ It sounded fascinating so I decided to find the book to write this essay.
▪ Secondary sources for A level essays will probably be the work of historians.
▪ These moral essays advanced other theories in harmony with sentimental comedy.
▪ This original paperback includes stories, essays and poems that celebrate motherhood.
▪ Winship's essay also draws attention to the increasing fragmentation of the body within recent commercial photography.
II.verb
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ He swayed to the music and essayed a little dance step.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Shan't you essay any alteration in your finances?
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Essay

Essay \Es*say"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Essayed; p. pr. & vb. n. Essaying.] [F. essayer. See Essay, n.]

  1. To exert one's power or faculties upon; to make an effort to perform; to attempt; to endeavor; to make experiment or trial of; to try.

    What marvel if I thus essay to sing?
    --Byron.

    Essaying nothing she can not perform.
    --Emerson.

    A danger lest the young enthusiast . . . should essay the impossible.
    --J. C. Shairp.

  2. To test the value and purity of (metals); to assay. See Assay. [Obs.]
    --Locke.

Essay

Essay \Es"say\, n.; pl. Essays. [F. essai, fr. L. exagium a weighing, weight, balance; ex out + agere to drive, do; cf. examen, exagmen, a means of weighing, a weighing, the tongue of a balance, exigere to drive out, examine, weigh, Gr. 'exa`gion a weight, 'exagia`zein to examine, 'exa`gein to drive out, export. See Agent, and cf. Exact, Examine, Assay.]

  1. An effort made, or exertion of body or mind, for the performance of anything; a trial; attempt; as, to make an essay to benefit a friend. ``The essay at organization.''
    --M. Arnold.

  2. (Lit.) A composition treating of any particular subject; -- usually shorter and less methodical than a formal, finished treatise; as, an essay on the life and writings of Homer; an essay on fossils, or on commerce.

  3. An assay. See Assay, n. [Obs.]

    Syn: Attempt; trial; endeavor; effort; tract; treatise; dissertation; disquisition.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
essay

1590s, "trial, attempt, endeavor," also "short, discursive literary composition" (first attested in writings of Francis Bacon, probably in imitation of Montaigne), from Middle French essai "trial, attempt, essay" (in Old French from 12c.), from Late Latin exagium "a weighing, a weight," from Latin exigere "drive out; require, exact; examine, try, test," from ex- "out" (see ex-) + agere (see act (n.)) apparently meaning here "to weigh." The suggestion is of unpolished writing. Compare assay, also examine.

essay

"to put to proof, test the mettle of," late 15c., from Middle French essaier, from essai "trial, attempt" (see essay (n.)). This sense has mostly gone with the divergent spelling assay. Meaning "to attempt" is from 1640s. Related: Essayed; essaying.

Wiktionary
essay

n. A written composition of moderate length exploring a particular issue or subject. vb. 1 (context dated transitive English) To try. 2 (context intransitive English) To move forth, as into battle.

WordNet
essay
  1. n. an analytic or interpretive literary composition

  2. a tentative attempt

  3. v. make an effort or attempt; "He tried to shake off his fears"; "The infant had essayed a few wobbly steps"; "The police attempted to stop the thief"; "He sought to improve himself"; "She always seeks to do good in the world" [syn: try, seek, attempt, assay]

  4. put to the test, as for its quality, or give experimental use to; "This approach has been tried with good results"; "Test this recipe" [syn: test, prove, try, try out, examine]

Wikipedia
Essay

An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument — but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have traditionally been sub-classified as formal and informal. Formal essays are characterized by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," whereas the informal essay is characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc.

Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays (e.g., Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism and An Essay on Man). While brevity usually defines an essay, voluminous works like John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Thomas Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population are counterexamples. In some countries (e.g., the United States and Canada), essays have become a major part of formal education. Secondary students are taught structured essay formats to improve their writing skills; admission essays are often used by universities in selecting applicants, and in the humanities and social sciences essays are often used as a way of assessing the performance of students during final exams.

The concept of an "essay" has been extended to other mediums beyond writing. A film essay is a movie that often incorporates documentary film making styles, and focuses more on the evolution of a theme or idea. A photographic essay covers a topic with a linked series of photographs that may have accompanying text or captions.

Essay (disambiguation)

An essay is a short piece of writing.

Essay may also refer to:

  • Essay (philately), a prototype of a proposed stamp
  • Essay (numismatics), a prototype of a proposed coin
  • Essay, Orne, a town in France
  • The Essay, a BBC Radio 3 programme
Essay (philately)

In philately, an essay is a design for a proposed stamp submitted to the postal authorities for consideration but not used, or used after alterations have been made. By contrast, a proof is a trial printing of an accepted stamp.

Both essays and proofs are rare, as usually just a few are produced. Although intended for internal use by printers and official bodies, essays sometimes find their way onto the philatelic market.

Essay (numismatics)

A numismatic essay is a coin prototype proposed for general sale or circulation.

Category:Coins

Usage examples of "essay".

The professors cultivate social and even intimate relations with the undergraduates, nor do they consider it beneath their dignity to invite them frequently to their homes, draw out their minds by discussing some important point, loan them books or periodicals, suggest subjects for essays or books, employ their service as amanuenses, and recommend them in due time for proper vacancies.

The essay profiles the companies jockeying to speed up the annotation process through universal programs and accessible databases.

Ravenclaw, Harry found himself walking down to dinner alone from the common room, Ron having rushed off into a nearby bathroom to throw up yet again, and Hermione having dashed off to see Professor Vector about a mistake she thought she might have made in her last Arithmancy essay.

A few days before the match against Ravenclaw, Harry found himself walking down to dinner alone from the common room, Ron having rushed off into a nearby bathroom to throw up yet again, and Hermione having dashed off to see Professor Vector about a mistake she thought she might have made in her last Arithmancy essay.

The following essay covers various aspects of bioinformatics, including some of the business and political considerations involved in conducting a project of this magnitude.

Sullivan told the story of how he became a blogger in what later came to be known as one of the landmark essays of the New Underground.

Since this essay was written it has been ascertained by Cavaliere Francesco Negri, of Casale Monferrato, that Tabachetti died in 1615.

Raffaele Garofalo published in the Neapolitan Journal of Philosophy and Literature an essay on criminality, in which he declared that the dangerousness of the criminal was the criterion by which society should measure the function of its defense against the disease of crime.

English about any cuisine, beautifully written without a touch of pretense and crystal clear in its essays, explanations of ingredients and techniques, line drawings, and 220 recipes.

In an essay which we might take as a practical example of how this dichotomy can be deconstructed, Richard Meyer writes, in the same volume, about the film star Rock Hudson, once the screen epitome of attractive heterosexual masculinity.

She would teach, she would study, and after four or five months she would write an extended historical essay, publish it pseudonymously under the name Demosthenes, and then enjoy herself until Ender accepted a call to go Speak somewhere else.

Another anxious moment, and with a sigh of relief Betty slipped on the short waist with its puffed sleeves and essayed to pin the fichu daintily around her neck.

Mutant Flas to the Foraging Unit, and notify them that he will essay the egg harvesting, snird division.

He enters freesia a third time, leaving the S as 5 but turning the 1 back to an I, and finds himself staring at an unfinished polemical essay.

Louis Exposition, Gilder had suggested that she do an essay on the hand.