inessential
Americanadjective
noun
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of inessential
Explanation
Something inessential isn't terribly important or necessary. While you need certain nutrients to stay alive and healthy, things like doughnuts and milkshakes are inessential parts of your diet. The ornamental fireplace in your house that's never used is inessential, but the wood stove that heats your kitchen all winter is not. Inessential details can complicate books, essays, or legal documents, making them harder to understand. The adjective inessential adds the prefix in-, or "not," to essential, "extremely important," from the Latin root essentia, "being or essence."
Vocabulary lists containing inessential
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.
She treats the question as compulsory but perhaps inessential.
From Salon • Oct. 30, 2024
MAP, deemed inessential, was cut, and the program dissolved within a few years.
From Scientific American • Aug. 28, 2023
It urged residents in the area to avoid inessential outings and to use caution against mudslides, flooding and thunderstorms.
From Seattle Times • Aug. 14, 2023
It often seems as though the most devoted fans of the prolific South Korean director Hong Sangsoo regard him as incapable of making an inessential work.
From New York Times • May 5, 2022
Nothing could be a better proof of the inessential nature of those tricks with which he had been making sure of his audience than the immense superiority of this play to the others.
From Oscar Wilde A Critical Study by Ransome, Arthur
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.
