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Grocery vs Essential - What's the difference?

grocery | essential |

As nouns the difference between grocery and essential

is that grocery is (usually groceries) retail foodstuffs and other household supplies while essential is a necessary ingredient.

As an adjective essential is

necessary.

grocery

English

(wikipedia grocery)

Noun

(groceries)
  • (usually groceries) retail foodstuffs and other household supplies.
  • * 1776:
    • Where ten thousand pounds can be employed in the grocery trade, the wages of the grocer's labour make but a very trifling addition...
  • * 1850 , '', ''The present time
    • Did not cotton spin itself, beef grow, and groceries and spiceries come in from the East and the West, quite comfortably by the side of shams?
  • A shop or store that sells groceries; a grocery store.
  • * 1854:
    • I observed that the vitals of the village were the grocery , the bar-room, the post-office, and the bank...

    Usage notes

    When referring to goods, the singular form is primarily used attributively, as in a grocery bill, a grocery list, etc. The plural form, groceries, is much more frequently used to refer to actual goods, especially in the US.

    Synonyms

    * (retail foodstuffs and household supplies) commodities, general goods, groceries, packaged goods * (store that sells groceries) general store, grocery store, market, supermarket

    Related terms

    * greengrocer * grocer * groceries

    References

    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 ----