different between essential vs existential

English

Alternative forms

• essentiall (obsolete)

Etymology

From Late Latin essenti?lis, from Latin essentia (“being, essence”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??s?n.??l/, [??s?n.t??l]
• Hyphenation: es?sen?tial

Adjective

essential (comparative more essential, superlative most essential)

1. Necessary.

   Synonyms: indispensable; see also Thesaurus:requisite

   Antonyms: accidental, accessorial, incidental, unnecessary, unneeded
2. Very important; of high importance.

   Synonyms: crucial; see also Thesaurus:important

   Antonyms: unimportant; see also Thesaurus:insignificant
3. (biology) necessary for survival but not synthesized by the organism, thus needing to be ingested
4. Being in the basic form; showing its essence.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:intrinsic, Thesaurus:bare-bones

   Antonyms: adscititious; see also Thesaurus:extrinsic

5. Really existing; existent.

   Synonyms: see Thesaurus:existent

   Antonyms: see Thesaurus:inexistent
6. (geometry) 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.

   (Can we add an example for this sense?)

7. (medicine) Idiopathic.
8. Having the nature of essence; not physical.

Antonyms

• inessential, unessential, non-essential, nonessential

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

essential (plural essentials)

1. A necessary ingredient.
2. A fundamental ingredient.

   (Can we add an example for this sense?)

Related terms

• essence

Translations

Further reading

• essential on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• siletanes

English

Etymology

Late Latin existentialis, from existentia.

Adjective

existential (not comparable)

1. Of, or relating to existence.
2. Concerning the very existence of, especially with regard to extinction.
3. Based on experience; empirical.
   • 1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, Lecture I:

     In recent books on logic, distinction is made between two orders of inquiry concerning anything. First, what is the nature of it? how did it come about? what is its constitution, origin, and history? And second, What is its importance, meaning, or significance, now that it is once here? The answer to the one question is given in an existential judgment or proposition. The answer to the other is a proposition of value, what the Germans call a Werthurtheil ...

4. (philosophy) Of, or relating to existentialism.
5. (linguistics) Relating to part of a clause that indicates existence, e.g. "there is".

Antonyms

• non-phenomenal
• noumenal
• non-metaphysical

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Noun

existential (plural existentials)

1. (linguistics) Ellipsis of existential clause
   • 2014, Silvia Luraghi, Tuomas Huumo, Partitive Cases and Related Categories, Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG (?ISBN), page 153:

     We argue that existentials form a radial category, with a prototype and less canonical instances, where the prototype is clearly definable but the actual borderline between existentials and other clause types is fuzzy.

2. (programming) Ellipsis of existential type

   Coordinate term: generic

Further reading

• "existential" in Raymond Williams, Keywords (revised), 1983, Fontana Press, page 123.

References