Definition of "essence" []

• The intrinsic or indispensable properties that serve to characterize or identify something. (noun)
• The most important ingredient; the crucial element. (noun)
• The inherent, unchanging nature of a thing or class of things. (noun)
• An extract that has the fundamental properties of a substance in concentrated form. (noun)
• Such an extract in a solution of alcohol. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The origins of this doctrine lie in Avicenna's account of radical contingency that considers the distinction between Necessary and contingent to lie in the simplicity of existence of the Necessary producing the complexity of the existence and essence of the contingent, where the contingent is an existent to whom accidents pertain bundled in what is known as their ˜essence™."
• "It is claimed that a Monotheistic Pantheism, that is, the idea of _one essence_, not person, but _essence_, is to _unite_, or make one, the whole human family upon the scientific (sciolistic) base that man himself is one grand part of the grand all-pervading, impersonal essence."
• "So, in essence is Beck is telling us is that Playboy = good, Playgirl = Bad."