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Essential vs Effective - What's the difference?

essential | effective |

As adjectives the difference between essential and effective

is that essential is necessary while effective is having the power to produce a required effect or effects.

As nouns the difference between essential and effective

is that essential is a necessary ingredient while effective is a soldier fit for duty.

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.

    • Related terms

    * essence ----

    effective

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Having the power to produce a required effect or effects.
    • The pill is an effective method of birth control.
  • Producing a decided or decisive effect.
    • The president delivered an effective speech!
  • * Jeremy Taylor
    • Whosoever is an effective , real cause of doing his neighbour wrong, is criminal.
  • Efficient, serviceable, or operative, available for useful work.
    • How long does it take to make a bunch of civilians an effective military force?
    My effective income after taxes and child support is $500 a month.
    The effective radiated power is determined by multiplying the transmitter power output with the antenna gain.
    The effective voltage of an alternating current is 0.7 times its peak voltage.
  • Actually in effect.
    • The curfew is effective at midnight.
  • Having no negative coefficients.

    • Related terms

    * effect * effectivity * effectual * efficacious * efficacity * efficacy * efficiency * efficient

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (military) A soldier fit for duty.
  • *1876 , , Recollections of the Elkhorn Campaign :
  • *:The Army of the West reached Corinth sometime after the battle of Shiloh. We were 15,000 effectives , and brought Beauregard's effective force up to 45,000 men.
    • ----