Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

essentially

UK/ɪˈsɛnʃəli/US/ɪˈsɛnʃəli/
adverbB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,610 of 15,258leans written

Essentially means at bottom, when you strip away the details. Essentially the same, essentially finished, essentially a rewrite.

It is a hedge that sounds like a clarification, and essentially finished usually means not finished. Used honestly it points at what a thing really is rather than what it is called, which is a useful move in an argument.

Definitions of essentially

  1. 1adverbessentiallyAt bottom, when you strip away the details.B2

    “The two phones are essentially the same, apart from the colour.”

essentially is a hedge.

Where it comes from

  1. Latin

    essentiālis

  2. English

    essential

  3. English, today

    essentially

From essential + -ly. essential Borrowed from Latin essentiālis. From Latin essentiālis, from Latin essentia (“being, essence”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

essentially in the wild

  • A star's corona is constantly being lost to space, creating what is essentially a very thin atmosphere throughout the Solar System.

    Weather

  • Although the precise form varies, it is essentially relatively 'free-form' fighting, with enough rules, customs, or agreements to minimize injuries.

    Sparring

  • The Village Act of 1989 changed the essence of the Village form of government, essentially eliminating it in all but name.

    Village (New Jersey)

  • Besides Filipino (Tagalog), essentially the same alphabet is used for Ilocano, Cebuano, Hiligaynon and Bicol.

    Philippine Braille

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the essentiālis family

essentialessentially

essentially — used about once every 1,030 pages · #4,610 · point at the bar for the others