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Essential vs Adjunct - What's the difference?

essential | adjunct |

As adjectives the difference between essential and adjunct

is that essential is necessary while adjunct is connected in a subordinate function.

As nouns the difference between essential and adjunct

is that essential is a necessary ingredient while adjunct is an appendage; something attached to something else in a subordinate capacity.

essential

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Necessary.
  • Very important; of high importance.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-05-17
  • , author=George Monbiot, authorlink=George Monbiot , title=Money just makes the rich suffer , volume=188, issue=23, page=19 , magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) citation , passage=In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. The welfare state is dismantled. Essential public services are cut so that the rich may pay less tax. […]}}
  • Being in the basic form; showing its essence.
  • Don’t mind him being grumpy. That’s the essential Fred.
  • Really existing; existent.
  • * Webster (1623)
  • Is it true, that thou art but a name, / And no essential thing?
  • Such that each complementary region is irreducible, the boundary of each complementary region is incompressible by disks and monogons in the complementary region, and no leaf is a sphere or a torus bounding a solid torus in the manifold.
  • (medicine) Idiopathic.
  • Synonyms

    * indispensable, crucial, substantive * See also

    Antonyms

    * inessential, unessential, accidental, nonessential, unneeded, adscititious, unimportant, accessorial, unnecessary, incidental

    Derived terms

    * essential amino acid * essential fatty acid * essential listening * essential nutrient * essential oil * essentially * essentialness * quintessential

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A necessary ingredient.
  • A fundamental ingredient.
  • adjunct

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • An appendage; something attached to something else in a subordinate capacity.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Learning is but an adjunct to our self.
  • A person associated with another, usually in a subordinate position; a colleague.
  • (Wotton)
  • (grammar) A dispensable phrase in a clause or sentence that amplifies its meaning, such as "for a while" in "I typed for a while".
  • (rhetoric) Symploce.
  • (dated, metaphysics) A quality or property of the body or mind, whether natural or acquired, such as colour in the body or judgement in the mind.
  • (music) A key or scale closely related to another as principal; a relative or attendant key.
  • (syntax, X-bar theory) A constituent which is both the daughter and the sister of an X-bar.
  • *
  • We can see from (34) that Determiners are sisters of N-bar and daughters of
    N-double-bar; Adjuncts' are both sisters and daughters of N-bar; and Comple-
    ments are sisters of N and daughters of N-bar. This means that '''Adjuncts''' re-
    semble Complements in that both are daughters of N-bar; but they differ from
    Complements in that '''Adjuncts''' are sisters of N-bar, whereas Complements are
    sisters of N. Likewise, it means that '''Adjuncts''' resemble Determiners in that
    both are sisters of N-bar, but they differ from Determiners in that '
    Adjuncts

    are daughters of N-bar, whereas Determiners are daughters of N-double-bar.

    Derived terms

    * adjuncthood * adjunctive

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Connected in a subordinate function.
  • * Shakespeare
  • Though that my death were adjunct to my act.
  • Added to a faculty or staff in a secondary position.