quintessential

English

Etymology

PIE word
*pénkʷe

quintessence +‎ -al

Pronunciation

• Audio (UK)

  (file)

• IPA^(key): /ˌkwɪntɪˈsɛnʃəl/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

Adjective

quintessential (comparative more quintessential, superlative most quintessential)

1. Of the nature of a quintessence (in all senses); being or relating to the ultimate essence of something.
   • 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Krogan: Biology Codex entry:

     The krogan evolved in a lethal ecology. Over millions of years, the grim struggle to survive larger predators, virulent disease, and resource scarcity on their homeworld, Tuchanka, turned the lizards into quintessential survivors.

   • 2014 May 6, Nicholas Shakespeare, “Twin Tracks by Roger Bannister, review: Roger Bannister's memoir of a life in athletics recalls the moment 60 years ago when he broke the four-minute mile [print version: The quiet Englishman, 10 May 2014, p. R26]”, in The Daily Telegraph (Review)‎^[1]:

     Twin Tracks is the old-fashioned autobiography of a quintessential Englishman, evocative of an age when you took halibut oil for rickets and sportsmen were amateurs who trained in their lunch breaks.

   • 2021 October 20, Dr Joseph Brennan, “A key part of our diverse railway heritage”, in RAIL, number 942, page 56:

     I live in a quintessential (Australian) building type myself - a high-set 'Queenslander' on Captain Cook's tropical Cape Tribulation coast - and some of the details I love most about it are its Deco influences - [...].

Derived terms

• quintessentialise
• quintessentiality
• quintessentialize
• quintessentially
• quintessentialness

Translations

of the nature of a quintessence

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 典型てんけい的てき (zh) (diǎnxíng de)

• Estonian: ülim
• Finnish: pohjimmainen, tyypillinen (fi)
• French: quintessentiel (fr)
• German: der Inbegriff des/der..., von Grund auf, durch und durch (de)
• Greek: τελειότατος m (teleiótatos)
• Khmer: ខ្លឹមសារ (kləm saa), សារវន្ត (saara’ voan), សារគតិ (saara’ kea’te’)
• Norwegian: ultimat m or f
• Portuguese: quintessencial, quinta-essencial
• Russian: оновной (onovnoj), типи́чный (ru) (tipíčnyj)
• Serbo-Croatian: tipičan (sh)
• Spanish: quintaesencial
• Yiddish: תּמציתדיק (tamtsesdik), עיקרדיק (ikerdik)

Noun

quintessential (plural quintessentials)

1. The fundamental essence of something.
   • 2013, Léonie J. Rennie, Grady Venville, John Wallace, Knowledge that Counts in a Global Community, page 64:

     A final aspect of the focus argument concerns the potential for integration to highlight the quintessentials of each subject.

References

• “quintessential”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.