Circumstantial vs Circumstantiate - What's the difference?

circumstantial | circumstantiate |

As an adjective circumstantial

is pertaining to or dependent on circumstances, especially as opposed to essentials; incidental, not essential.

As a noun circumstantial

is something incidental to the main subject, but of less importance.

As a verb circumstantiate is

to describe, verify or prove by setting out circumstantial evidence.

circumstantial

English

Adjective

(en adjective)

Pertaining to or dependent on circumstances, especially as opposed to essentials; incidental, not essential.

* Sharp

We must therefore distinguish between the essentials in religious worship and what is merely circumstantial .

Abounding with circumstances; detailing or exhibiting all the circumstances; minute; particular.

* 1806 , )

For although my information appears too direct and circumstantial to be fictitious, yet the magnitude of the enterprise, the desperation of the plan, and the stupendous consequences with which it seems pregnant, stagger my belief

* 2007 , John Burrow, A History of Histories , Penguin 2009, p. 326:

Second-hand but clearly from the best possible source - the King himself - [the story] is highly circumstantial , taking twenty-two pages of text.

Full of circumstance or pomp; ceremonial.

Noun

(en noun)

(chiefly, in the plural) Something incidental to the main subject, but of less importance.

the circumstantials of religion

Antonyms

* essential

circumstantiate

English

Verb

(circumstantiat)

To describe, verify or prove by setting out circumstantial evidence

Neither will time permit to circumstantiate these particulars, which I have only touched in the general. — State Trials (1661).

To place in particular circumstances; to invest with particular accidents or adjuncts.

If the act were otherwise circumstantiated , it might will that freely which now it wills reluctantly. — Bramhall.