essential: Meaning and Definition of

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.
    1. (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.
    2. (of a discontinuity) noting that the function is discontinuous and has no limit at the point. Cf. removable (def. 2).
—n.
  1. 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.
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