ESSENCE

Essence

In philosophy, essence is the attribute or set of attributes that make an entity or substance what it fundamentally is, and which it has by necessity, adds character and without which it loses its identity. Essence is contrasted with accident: a property that the entity or substance has contingently, without which the substance can still retain its identity. The concept originates with Aristotle, who used the Greek expression to ti ên einai, literally 'the what it was to be', or sometimes the shorter phrase to ti esti, literally 'the what it is,' for the same idea. This phrase presented such difficulties for his Latin translators that they coined ...

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essence

Noun

  1. The inherent nature of a thing or idea.
  2. The true nature of anything, not accidental or illusory.
  3. Constituent substance.
  4. A being; especially, a purely spiritual being.
  5. A significant feature of something.
  6. The concentrated form of a plant or drug obtained through a distillation process.
  7. Fragrance, a perfume.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: essence
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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