Site Map | FAQ

• Editor's Favorites
  • Black History Month
  • 2010 Winter Olympics
  • Valentine's Day
  • Profile of Haiti
  • 2010 Calendar
  • Holidays in America
  • Most Populous Countries
  • H1N1 Overview
  • Countries of the World
  • Top 50 U.S. Cities
  • Color Psychology
  • Most Popular Names
  • The Fifty States

Dictionary

es•sen•tial

Pronunciation: (u-sen'shul), [key]
—adj.
1. absolutely necessary; indispensable: Discipline is essential in an army.
2. pertaining to or constituting the essence of a thing.
3. noting or containing an essence of a plant, drug, etc.
4. being such by its very nature or in the highest sense; natural; spontaneous: essential happiness.
5. Math.
a. (of a singularity of a function of a complex variable) noting that the Laurent series at the point has an infinite number of terms with negative powers.
b. (of a discontinuity) noting that the function is discontinuous and has no limit at the point. Cf. removable (def. 2).

—n.
a basic, indispensable, or necessary element; chief point: Concentrate on essentials rather than details.

Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Copyright © 1997, by Random House, Inc., on Infoplease.

Essene

essential amino acid

• • Cite
  • Print
  • Email
  • Bookmark
    • Add bookmark
    • Add to del.icio.us
    • Digg It!
    • Add to Reddit

Related Content Daily Word Quiz: hubris Analogy of the Day: Today's Analogy Spelling Bee: Today's Spelling Bee Kids' Word Quiz: exemplary Crossword: Crossword Puzzle Guide Frequently Misspelled Words Frequently Mispronounced Words Easily Confused Words Writing & Language

Find definitions for: