quintessence
IPA: kwɪntˈɛsʌns
noun
- A thing that is the most perfect example of its type; the most perfect embodiment of something; epitome, prototype.
- A pure substance.
- The essence of a thing in its purest and most concentrated form.
- (alchemy) The fifth alchemical element, or essence, after earth, air, fire, and water that fills the universe beyond the terrestrial sphere.
- (physics) A hypothetical form of dark energy postulated to explain observations of an accelerating universe.
verb
- (transitive) To reduce to its purest and most concentrated essence.
Advertisement
Examples of "quintessence" in Sentences
- That's what I call the quintessence of domestic economy.
- It has an odour which I can only describe as the quintessence of onions, but this is concentrated in the rind.
- What a thing to say: "I have achieved eumoiriety," -- namely the quintessence of happy-fatedness dealt unto oneself by a perfect altruism!
- Funny how, in an article about a violent religious conflict (which liberals describe as the quintessence of religion), only one of the religions is named.
- Astrophysicists and cosmologists have resorted to the term quintessence to describe the mysterious "dark matter" that appears to be accelerating the expansion of the universe.
- Malvinas Islands, in reiterating its support of the inalienable right of the people of Belize to self-determination, independence and territorial integrity, the conference again confirmed that which its declaration defined as the quintessence of nonalinement.
- Daughters of St. Francis of Sales, on the occasion of their Tercentenary, give to the English-speaking world a work which, in its wise curtailment and still full detail, may be called the quintessence of the Spirit of their Master, the Founder of their Institute.
- Although the four-elements paradigm remained robust throughout antiquity and through the Middle Ages (during which a mystical tradition emerged proposing a fifth element, ruling the others, the socalled quintessence), atomism fell out of favor for nearly two millennia until the quantitative philosophy of the early Enlightenment created a conceptual environment friendly to the metamorphosis of alchemy, through the chemical experiments of Robert Hooke,
- How could this boy from Brooklyn, this New Yorker in heart and mind, this supermale with six marriages, this man whom the feminist Kate Millett called the quintessence of the heterosexual, macho pig — how could this man have chosen to live in a small town of 3,500 souls, most of them homosexuals, whose contribution to local culture consists (if I am to believe the waiter in the faux fisherman's restaurant where I wait till it's time for our interview) of a festival of sexy bodies, a week for leather enthusiasts, and a colloquium on the problems posed by adoption by same-sex couples?
Advertisement
Advertisement