quintessential
/ˌkwɪntɪˈsɛnʃəl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.03 in modern English
23
Scrabble Score
14
Letters
4
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Of the nature of a quintessence (in all senses); being or relating to the ultimate essence of something.
noun
The fundamental essence of something.
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."
- "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 - [...]."
- "A final aspect of the focus argument concerns the potential for integration to highlight the quintessentials of each subject."
Etymology
PIE word *pénkʷe From quintessence + -al.