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Essential vs Expedient - What's the difference?

essential | expedient |

As nouns the difference between essential and expedient

is that essential is a necessary ingredient while expedient is expedient.

As an adjective essential

is necessary.

As a verb expedient is

.

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 ----

    expedient

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Simple, easy, or quick; convenient.
    • Most people, faced with a decision, will choose the most expedient option.
  • * Bible, John xvi. 7
    • It is expedient for you that I go away.
  • * Whately
    • Nothing but the right can ever be expedient , since that can never be true expediency which would sacrifice a greater good to a less.
  • Governed by self-interest, often short-term self-interest.
  • * 1861 , John Stuart Mill,
    • But the Expedient', in the sense in which it is opposed to the Right, generally means that which is ' expedient for the particular interest of the agent himself; as when a minister sacrifices the interests of his country to keep himself in place.
  • (obsolete) Quick; rapid; expeditious.
  • * Shakespeare
    • His marches are expedient to this town.

    Related terms

    * expede * expedience * expediency * expedite * expedition

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A method or means for achieving a particular result, especially when direct or efficient; a resource.
  • * 1906 , O. Henry, :
    • He would never let her know that he was aware of the strange expedient to which she had been driven by her great distress.
  • * 2009 , (Diarmaid MacCulloch), A History of Christianity , Penguin 2010, page 709:
    • Depressingly, [...] the expedient of importing African slaves was in part meant to protect the native American population from exploitation.

    External links

    * * ----