essential

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   basic and fundamental

   the essential feature

2. 2
   adj

   being or relating to or containing the essence of a plant etc

   essential oil

3. 3
   adj

   Necessary.

   There’s canker at the root, your seed Denies the blessing of the sun, The light essential to your need. Your hopes are murdered and undone.

4. 4
   adj

   Very important; of high importance.

   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. […]

5. 5
   adj

   Being in the basic form; showing its essence.

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

6. 6
   adj

   Really existing; existent.

   Or is it true, that thou art but a bare name, / And no eſſential thing?

7. 7
   adj

   Idiopathic.

   essential blepharospasm

8. 8
   adj

   Having the nature of essence; not physical.

   It is usually allowed that there is the natural body, as St. Paul called it, which is dissolved at death, and the etheric or spiritual body which survives and functions upon an etheric plane. Those are the essential things. But we may really have as many coats as an onion and there may be a mental body which may shed itself at any spot where great mental or emotional strain has been experienced.

Etymology

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