essential - Dictionary definition and pronunciation - Yahoo! Education

Definition of essential

Reference
Dictionary
Encyclopedia
Thesaurus
World Factbook
Spanish Dictionary
Anatomy
Conversion Calculator

Word of the Day
rationale
Definition: (noun) an underlying reason or explanation.
Petersons.com
Add Word of the Day to your personalized My Yahoo! page:
Add to My Yahoo! View RSS Feed
About My Yahoo! and RSS »
  

es·sen·tial  audio  (-snshl) KEY 

ADJECTIVE:
  1. Constituting or being part of the essence of something; inherent.
  2. Basic or indispensable; necessary: essential ingredients. See Synonyms at indispensable.
  3. Medicine Of, relating to, or being a dysfunctional condition or a disease whose cause is unknown: essential hypertension.
  4. Biochemistry Being a substance that is required for normal functioning but cannot be synthesized by the body and therefore must be included in the diet: essential amino acids.
NOUN:
  1. Something fundamental.
  2. Something necessary or indispensable.


OTHER FORMS:
es·senti·ali·ty  (-sh-l-t) KEY  or es·sential·ness(Noun), es·sential·ly(Adverb)


 Visit our partner's site
Provided by Houghton Mifflin
logoeReference -- Download this interactive reference software to your desktop computer