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Essential vs Nonvital - What's the difference?

essential | nonvital |

As adjectives the difference between essential and nonvital

is that essential is necessary while nonvital is not vital (in various senses); thus, often not essential for life.

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 ----

    nonvital

    English

    Alternative forms

    *non-vital

    Adjective

    (-)
  • Not vital (in various senses); thus, often not essential for life
    • The eye is a nonvital organ.
  • (dentistry) Not containing living nerve tissue
  • *{{quote-journal, 1998, J.W. Myers, Demonstration of a possible source of error with an electric pulp tester, Journal of Endodontics, volume=24, issue=3 citation
    • , passage=Such an occurrence could provoke a vital response from a patient when a nonvital tooth was being tested (a "false-positive").}}

    Derived terms

    *nonvitality *nonvitally