Word.ws English Dictionary

essential

Syllables: es·sen·tialUK/ɪˈsɛn.ʃəl//ɪˈsɛn.ʃəl/

essential adjective: necessary.

Adjective

essential (comparative more essential, superlative most essential)

  1. 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.1941, Theodore Roethke, “Feud”, in Open House, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, →OCLC; republished in The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, London: Faber and Faber […], 1968, →OCLC, page 4
    • Thus, research-based resources with the potential to assist teachers prepare secondary students for tertiary education are essential.2018, Clarence Green, James Lambert, “Advancing disciplinary literacy through English for academic purposes: Discipline-specific wordlists, collocations and word families for eight secondary...
  2. Very important; of high importance.
    • I see it as essential that there should be somewhere to park.
    • 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. […]2013 May 17, George Monbiot, “Money just makes the rich suffer”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 188, number 23, page 19
  3. Necessary for survival but not synthesized by the organism, thus needing to be ingested.
  4. Being in the basic form; showing its essence.
    • Don’t mind him being grumpy. That’s the essential Fred.
  5. Really existing; existent.
    • Or is it true, that thou art but a bare name, / And no eſſential thing?1612–1613 (date written), John Webster, The Tragedy of the Dutchesse of Malfy. […], London: […] Nicholas Okes, for Iohn Waterson, […], published 1623, →OCLC, Act III, scene ii
  6. 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.
  7. Idiopathic.
    • essential blepharospasm
  8. 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...1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “In which Three Investigators Come across a Dark Soul”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published...

Noun

essential (plural essentials)

  1. A necessary ingredient.
    Synonyms:
    must-have
  2. A fundamental ingredient.

essential meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

essential in Hindi

necessary
आवश्यक āvaśyak, अनिवार्य anivārya
of high importance
विशिष्ट viśiṣṭ
in basic form
मौलिक maulik

essential in Tamil

necessary
அவசியமான avaciyamāṉa
of high importance
இன்றியமையாத iṉṟiyamaiyāta

essential in Marathi

essential, required
अनिवार्य anivārya

essential in Urdu

essential
اصلی aslī
More languagesFewer languages
essential in Bengali
প্রয়োজন proẏōjon, ফরজ phoroj, দরকার dorkar, অতি জরুরি oti joruri
essential in Malayalam
അനിവാര്യം anivāryaṁ, നിർബന്ധം niṟbandhaṁ, കാര്യം kāryaṁ
essential in Kannada
ಪ್ರಮುಖವಾದ, ಮುಖ್ಯವಾದ, ಅಗತ್ಯವಾದ, ಸಾರಭೂತವಾದ
essential in Punjabi
ਵਾਸਤਵ vāstav
essential in Assamese
জৰুৰী zoruri
essential in Nepali
मूल mūl
essential in Pashto
اړين əṛín
essential in Indonesian
esensial

Examples of essential in a sentence

  • An essential definition of time should entail neither speed nor direction, just change.
  • I see it as essential that there should be somewhere to park.
  • Lexical gaps are called accidental because their existence is by accident; it is not essential.

All 40 example sentences with essential

Synonyms of essential

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

10 more antonymsFewer antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of essential

Forms of essential

Adjective
comparativemore essential
superlativemost essential
alternative formessentiall
Noun
pluralessentials

Plural of essential: essentials

Origin of essential

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

Words formed from essential

Phrases with essential

2 more phrasesFewer phrases

Questions about essential

What does essential mean?
Essential means necessary.
What is essential in Hindi?
Essential in Hindi is आवश्यक (āvaśyak), अनिवार्य (anivārya), विशिष्ट (viśiṣṭ). See Essential meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is essential?
Essential can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce essential?
Essential is pronounced /ɪˈsɛn.ʃəl/ (UK).

Words near essential in the dictionary

  1. Essenisms
  2. Essenmacher
  3. Essenmachers
  4. essent
  5. essentiability
  6. essential
  7. essential amino acid
  8. essential amino acids
  9. essential clause
  10. essential clauses
  11. essential fatty acid

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: essential (page history and authors); अनिवार्य (Marathi) (page history and authors); اصلی (Urdu) (page history and authors); അനിവാര്യം (Malayalam) (page history and authors); essential (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਵਾਸਤਵ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); জৰুৰী (Assamese) (page history and authors); मूल (Nepali) (page history and authors); اړين (Pashto) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “essential.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/essential. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.