5 uses
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Definition
necessary or important or relating to the basic nature of something
- One must strain off what was personal and accidental in all these impressions and so reach the pure fluid, the essential oil of truth.2 (2% in)
- So, making a perfectly arbitrary choice of a dozen volumes or so, I sent my slips of paper to lie in the wire tray, and waited in my stall, among the other seekers for the essential oil of truth.2 (16% in)
- The student by my side, for instance, who was copying assiduously from a scientific manual, was, I felt sure, extracting pure nuggets of the essential ore every ten minutes or so.2 (20% in)
- Whatever may be their use in civilized societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action.2 (68% in)
- 'See what Mr Oscar Browning says,' he would say; and there so was not only Mr Oscar Browning; there was the SATURDAY REVIEW; there was Mr Greg—the 'essentials of a woman's being', said Mr Greg emphatically, 'are that THEY ARE SUPPORTED BY, AND THEY MINISTER TO, MEN'—there was an enormous body of masculine opinion to the effect that nothing could be expected of women intellectually.3 (81% in)
There are no more uses of "essential" in A Room of One's Own.
Typical Usage
(best examples)