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Essential vs Unavoidable - What's the difference?

essential | unavoidable |

As adjectives the difference between essential and unavoidable

is that essential is necessary while unavoidable is impossible to avoid; bound to happen.

As nouns the difference between essential and unavoidable

is that essential is a necessary ingredient while unavoidable is something that cannot be avoided.

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 ----

    unavoidable

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Impossible to avoid; bound to happen.
  • (legal) Not voidable; incapable of being made null or void.
    • (Blackstone)

    Usage notes

    * See usage notes at inevitable.

    Synonyms

    * (impossible to avoid) inescapable, inevitable

    Antonyms

    * (impossible to avoid) avoidable

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Something that cannot be avoided.
  • * 1825 , The London magazine (volume 12, page 490)
    • Forty years before, I had thought this odour one of the necessities of life — one of the unavoidables at least