What is "quintessential"

Usage examples of "quintessential".

We both hailed from Long Island and we were both quintessential loners who had long ago escaped into solitary pursuits, his being photography, mine writing.

Lara said, shrugging with the casual informality which was such a quintessential part of her.

Polovtsian Dances, which came to represent the quintessential sound of the Orient, was actually drawn from Chuvash, Bashkir, Hungarian, Algerian, Tunisian and Arabian melodies.

Even Lincoln had not yet learned the quintessential difference between that civil control by which the fighting services are so rightly made the real servants of the whole people and that civilian interference which is very much the same as if a landlubber owning, a ship should grab the wheel repeatedly in the middle of a storm.

The quintessential Libertarian argument for drug legalization is that people should be allowed to do what they want with their own bodies even if it ruins their lives.

Hot quintessential drops of bryony juice, Squeezed out in anguish: all of that once vast!

She told the senator he should attack NASA's huge budget overruns and continued White House bailouts as the quintessential example of President Herney's careless overspending.

Many times he saw the squat, rotund figure of Helene Demuth, the Marx family's devoted housekeeper who looked the very model of the quintessential German nannie, rushing to and fro, airing out rugs and cleaning up inside and out.

Nomuri first of all ordered a genuine Italian white wine--- strangely, the wine list here was actually first rate, and quite pricey to boot, of course--- and, with a deep breath, fettuccine Alfredo, quintessential Italian heart-attack food.

Nomuri first of all ordered a genuine Italian white wine -- strangely, the wine list here was actually first rate, and quite pricey to boot, of course -- and, with a deep breath, fettuccine Alfredo, quintessential Italian heart-attack food.

The brute force technique as refined to its quintessential form by Field Marshal Haig involved silencing hostile machine guns by attacking with more infantry than the machine gunners had bullets.

Janet had been the quintessential uptown, Junior Leaguer, perfectly turned out even when her marriage was falling apart.

He was drawing something with pencil crayons, his tongue sticking out and up from the corner of his mouth in the quintessential childhood look of concentration.

However determined one might be to be diplomatic and reasonable, it must be hard to remember one's intention when all one wanted to do was to strangle the stiff-necked, obstinate, bigoted, prejudiced, quintessential young Sothōii reactionary on the other side of the conference table.

I followed it through stands of scruffy coastal pines into the quintessential shrimping village of Eastpoint.