Noun

(en noun)

A written composition of moderate length exploring a particular issue or subject.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-01

, author=Katie L. Burke , title=Ecological Dependency , volume=101, issue=1, page=64 , magazine= citation , passage=In his first book since the 2008 essay collection Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature , David Quammen looks at the natural world from yet another angle: the search for the next human pandemic, what epidemiologists call “the next big one.”}}

(obsolete) A test, experiment; an assay.

An attempt.

* 1988 , James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom , Oxford 2003, p. 455:

This was Lee's first essay in the kind of offensive-defensive strategy that was to become his hallmark.

Noun

(en noun)

A lengthy, formal discourse that analyses or explains some topic; a dissertation or treatise.

* 1961 : PHILIP, J. A. Mimesis in the ''Sophistês'' of Plato . In: Proceedings and Transactions of the American Philological Association 92. p. 455.

In this disquisition of the third book Plato is concerned with the moral effects of artistic representation on the youth of his state.

*1759 — , Theory of Moral Sentiments , page 187.

Upon this account political disquisitions , if just, and reasonable, and practicable, are of all the works of speculation the most useful.