essentially
Britishadverb
Explanation
Notice the tie between essentially and the word "essence," referring to the very core of something. As an adverb, then, essentially refers to something's nature. In spite of your faults, you're essentially a good person. The word essentia came from the Lower Latin, referring to something's inherent qualities. If you're convinced that there's not much difference between two things, you might say that they are essentially the same. Nietzsche once made the essentially sexist comment, "Man wishes woman to be peaceable, but in fact she is essentially warlike, like the cat.”
Vocabulary lists containing essentially
Amari and the Night Brothers
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
GameStop’s stock is essentially flat over the past 12 months.
From MarketWatch • May 1, 2026
Castañeda-Leal and Barrera support California law, which is essentially the position stated by Lara.
From Los Angeles Times • May 1, 2026
And she essentially says that this has been a set of cases that ended Wednesday with what she describes as a kind of dead letter, a ghost of whatever Section 2 was.
From Slate • Apr. 30, 2026
Industry-level gross domestic product rose 0.2% in February, slightly faster than the 0.1% climb recorded in the first month of 2026, and Statistics Canada’s advance data indicates output was essentially unchanged in March.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 30, 2026
The transmission of heredity, as Aristotle perceived it, was essentially the transmission of information.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
