Word.ws English Dictionary

subessential

subessential adjective: less than essential; unimportant.

Adjective

subessential (comparative more subessential, superlative most subessential)

  1. (rare) Less than essential; unimportant.
    • There were other things pressing, but look how subessential—continuing to read the pulp novel on the bed stand, droning through the video game on the computer, phoning the new restaurant to ask the time of the early-bird special, […]2020, David Lee, Why Am I Why I Am?

Forms of subessential

comparativemore subessential
superlativemost subessential

Origin of subessential

From sub- + essential.

Questions about subessential

What does subessential mean?
Subessential means less than essential; unimportant.
What part of speech is subessential?
Subessential is an adjective.

Words near subessential in the dictionary

  1. suberythemal
  2. suberythropoietic
  3. subescheator
  4. subescheators
  5. subesophageal
  6. subessential
  7. subessive
  8. subessive case
  9. subessive cases
  10. subestimate
  11. subestimated

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: subessential (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: “subessential.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/subessential. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.