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Essential vs Indispensible - What's the difference?

essential | indispensible |

As adjectives the difference between essential and indispensible

is that essential is necessary while indispensible is .

As a noun essential

is a necessary ingredient.

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 ----

    indispensible

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • * {{quote-journal, 2008, date=March 21, Bernd Buldt, Benedikt Löwe and Thomas Müller, Towards a New Epistemology of Mathematics, Erkenntnis, url=, doi=10.1007/s10670-008-9101-6, volume=68, issue=3, pages=
    • , passage=However, whereas Van Bendegem and Van Kerkhove conclude by saying that experimental methods and an empirical basis form an indispensible backdrop for mathematical practice, Baker goes the other way and says that the fact that mathematicians use experiments in the context of discovery is “compatible with the view that mathematics is a priori and deductive at its core”. }}