Word.ws English Dictionary

unessence

unessence noun: lack of essence; that which is not essence.

Noun

unessence (uncountable)

  1. Lack of essence; that which is not essence.

Verb

unessence (third-person singular simple present unessences, present participle unessencing, simple past and past participle unessenced)

  1. (transitive) To deprive of its essential nature.
    • Not only does truth, in these long intervals, unessence herself, but (what is harder) one cannot venture a crude fiction for the fear that it may ripen into a truth upon the voyage.1823, Elia [pseudonym; Charles Lamb], Elia. Essays which have Appeared under that Signature in The London Magazine, London: […] [Thomas Davison] for Taylor and Hessey, […], →OCLC
    • Education is a vital process involving intelligent, growing, sensitive and dynamic human elements and it becomes mechanical at the risk of unessencing itself.1965, An introduction to educational and psychological research, page 7

Forms of unessence

third-person singular presentunessences
present participleunessencing
past participleunessenced
pastunessenced

Origin of unessence

From un- + essence.

Questions about unessence

What does unessence mean?
Unessence means lack of essence; that which is not essence.
What part of speech is unessence?
Unessence can be a noun or a verb.

Words near unessence in the dictionary

  1. unescutcheoned
  2. unesoteric
  3. unespied
  4. unespoused
  5. unessayed
  6. unessence
  7. unessenced
  8. unessences
  9. unessencing
  10. unessential
  11. unessentiality

Source and license

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