The Collaborative International Dictionary
Essential \Es*sen"tial\ ([e^]s*s[e^]n"sjal), a. [Cf. F. essentiel. See Essence.]
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Belonging to the essence, or that which makes an object, or class of objects, what it is.
Majestic as the voice sometimes became, there was forever in it an essential character of plaintiveness.
--Hawthorne. -
Hence, really existing; existent.
Is it true, that thou art but a name, And no essential thing?
--Webster (1623). -
Important in the highest degree; indispensable to the attainment of an object; indispensably necessary.
Judgment's more essential to a general Than courage.
--Denham.How to live? -- that is the essential question for us.
--H. Spencer. Containing the essence or characteristic portion of a substance, as of a plant; highly rectified; pure; hence, unmixed; as, an essential oil. ``Mine own essential horror.''
--Ford.(Mus.) Necessary; indispensable; -- said of those tones which constitute a chord, in distinction from ornamental or passing tones.
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(Med.) Idiopathic; independent of other diseases.
Essential character (Biol.), the prominent characteristics which serve to distinguish one genus, species, etc., from another.
Essential disease, Essential fever (Med.), one that is not dependent on another.
Essential oils (Chem.), a class of volatile oils, extracted from plants, fruits, or flowers, having each its characteristic odor, and hot burning taste. They are used in essences, perfumery, etc., and include many varieties of compounds; as lemon oil is a terpene, oil of bitter almonds an aldehyde, oil of wintergreen an ethereal salt, etc.; -- called also volatile oils in distinction from the fixed or nonvolatile.
Usage examples of "essential character".
We are least likely in the modifications of these organs to mistake a merely adaptive for an essential character.
On the other hand, the rhizomes bear bladders resembling in essential character those on the rhizomes of Utricularia.
For although her conversation, baldly recorded here, may suggest that Miss McGuckin was censorious and demanding, it must be remembered that she was only eighteen, and the charm of youth clouded the sharp outlines of her essential character.
We may accept (what after all it is absurd to accuse and oppose) the essential character of existence.
Of course it will be understood that mere expansions do not destroy the essential character of the arrangements.
Cuff but much, much more than I, had perceived as her essential character.
In his categorical affirmative of the essential character of things, in his often rash simplification of form, in his insolent desire to look at the sun face to face, in the passion of his drawing and colour, there lies revealed a powerful one, a male, a darer who is sometimes brutal, sometimes ingenuously delicate.
I scarce felt these latest changes had done much to improve the place: at least the world of Morlocks and Eloi had seen the retention of the essential character of the English countryside, with its abundant greenery and water.
It is sub-man tradition and his essential character to serve as quarry.
The essential character of the genus is an involucre (the enveloping outer leaves of the composite heads of flowers) consisting of a single series of scales of equal length.
Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.
I tinkered and cleaned and oiled and fiddled with the old-fashioned regulator until it was as accurate a timepiece as its age and essential character allowed.
When I asked him once what was the essential character of the seers of the new cycle, he said that they are the warriors of total free- dom, that they are such masters of awareness, stalk- ing, and intent that they are not caught by death, like the rest of mortal men, but choose the moment and the way of their departure from this world.