quintessential

English

Etymology

PIE word
*pénkʷe

From 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.
   • 2002, Andy Slaven, Video Game Bible, 1985-2002, page 145:

     Often heralded as the quintessential RPG, and rarely rivaled by any other, this game is becoming increasingly difficult to find due to the fact that so many RPG fans are buying them at every chance they get.

   • 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], archived from the original on 9 October 2014:

     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
• superquintessential
• super-quintessential

Translations

of the nature of a quintessence

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 典型的 (zh) (diǎnxíng de)

• Estonian: ülim
• Finnish: pohjimmainen (fi), 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: существенный (ru) (suščestvennyj), 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.