1. Possessing no essence or substance; immaterial.
1667. Milton, P. L., II. 439. The void profound Of unessential Night receives him next.
1727. Thomson, Summer, 81. Prime Chearer, Light!… Without whose vesting Beauty, all were wrapt In unessential Gloom.
1768–74. Tucker, Lt. Nat. (1834), I. 666. Ask me by what authority of history I prove that Regulus had any notion of the unessential nature of justice.
1827. Pollok, Course T., III. 412. Most unsubstantial, unessential shade, Was earthly Fame.
2. Not pertaining to or affecting the essence of a matter; unimportant.
a. 1656. Bp. Hall, Beauty & Vnitie Ch., Wks. 1837, V. 245. Neither difference of time, nor distance of place,… nor any unessential error, can bar our interest in this Blessed Unity.
1716. Addison, Freeholder, No. 39, ¶ 5. Those, who differed from him in the unessential Parts of Christianity.
1748. Melmoth, Fitzosborne Lett. (1763), 169. So far is he from thinking it unessential, that he acknowledged it as the only separation which distinguishes them from prose.
1838. Arnold, Hist. Rome (1845), I. 166. A form … as unessential as the crowd’s acceptance of the king at an English coronation.
1873. M. Arnold, Lit. & Dogma (1876), 166. This excludes as unessential much of the criticism which [etc.].
B. absol. That which is not essential.
1840. Carlyle, Heroes, iv. (1904), 139. He distinguishes what is essential, and what is not; the unessential may go very much as it will.
1841. Myers, Cath. Th., III. § 33. 120. Who is to determine … the limit of the Unessential?
3. sb. An unessential thing or feature.
1828–32. Webster, s.v., Forms are among the unessentials of religion.
1876. Stainer & Barrett, Dict. Mus., 444/2. Unessentials, notes not forming a necessary part of the harmony. Passing, auxiliary, or ornamental notes.
1882. Nature, XXVI. 523. A general conception … is arrived at by abstracting the essentials and neglecting the unessentials.
Hence Unessentially adv.
1809. Madison, Message to Congress, 29 Nov., in Speeches, etc., U.S. Presidents (1825), 261. The correspondence between the department of state and this minister will show, how unessentially the features presented in its commencement have been varied in its progress.
1838. J. R. Peabody, A World of Wonders (ed. 3), v. 55. The labors of his hands, whose design cannot be ascertained, and which still promise to resist the physical changes of the globe, unessentially impaired for unnumbered generations to come.
[1847. Webster.]
1856. Olmsted, Slave States, 182. With a climate so unessentially dissimilar.
