in essence

Idioms  

1. Basically, by nature, as in He is in essence a very private person or In essence, they were asking the wrong question. This term employs essence in the sense of “intrinsic nature,” a usage dating from the mid-1600s.

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

in essence

“I’ve always associated horror with summertime, actually. Like ‘Friday the 13th,’ ‘Sleepaway Camp’” — in essence, the freedom of summer invaded by fear and death.

From Salon ● Jun. 30, 2026

Computer learning will, in essence, turn somewhat retro with classes using alternative options such as laptop carts or computer lab models.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 23, 2026

Nvidia has been paying a success tax, in essence.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 4, 2026

Instead, they wrote what was in essence a series of dueling law-review articles on the major-questions doctrine.

From Slate ● Mar. 4, 2026

Meggers’s “law of environmental limitation of culture,” her critics in essence say, is nothing but a green variant of Holmberg’s Mistake.

From "1491" by Charles C. Mann

Related Words

• actually
• approximately
• necessarily
• originally
• permanently
• quite
• really
• substantially
• truly
• typically
• virtually