Basic vs. Essential

Basic vs. Essential — Is There a Difference?
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Difference Between Basic and Essential

Basicadjective

Necessary, essential for life or some process.

Flour is a basic ingredient of bread.

Essentialadjective

Necessary.

Basicadjective

Elementary, simple, fundamental, merely functional.

The Hotel Sparta’s accommodation is very basic.

Essentialadjective

Very important; of high importance.

Basicadjective

(chemistry) Of or pertaining to a base; having a pH greater than 7.

Essentialadjective

(biology) necessary for survival but not synthesized by the organism, thus needing to be ingested

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Basicadjective

(slang) Unremarkable or uninteresting; boring; uncool.

Essentialadjective

Being in the basic form; showing its essence.

Don’t mind him being grumpy. That’s the essential Fred.

Basicnoun

A necessary commodity, a staple requirement.

Rice is a basic for many Asian villagers.

Essentialadjective

Really existing; existent.

Basicnoun

An elementary building block, e.g. a fundamental piece of knowledge.

Arithmetic is a basic for the study of mathematics.

Essentialadjective

(of a lamination of a 3-manifold) 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.

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Basicnoun

(military) Basic training.

The drill sergeants gave him hell in basic.

Essentialadjective

(medicine) Idiopathic.

Basicnoun

a popular programming language that is relatively easy to learn; an acronym for beginner's all-purpose symbolic instruction code; no longer in general use

Essentialnoun

A necessary ingredient.

Basicnoun

(usually plural) a necessary commodity for which demand is constant

Essentialnoun

A fundamental ingredient.

Basicadjective

pertaining to or constituting a base or basis;

a basic factthe basic ingredientsbasic changes in public opinion occur because of changes in priorities

Essentialnoun

anything indispensable;

food and shelter are necessities of lifethe essentials of the good lifeallow farmers to buy their requirements under favorable conditionsa place where the requisites of water fuel and fodder can be obtained

Basicadjective

reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible without loss of generality;

a basic story linea canonical syllable pattern

Essentialadjective

absolutely necessary; vitally necessary;

essential tools and materialsfunds essential to the completion of the projectan indispensable worker

Basicadjective

of primary importance;

basic truths

Essentialadjective

basic and fundamental;

the essential feature

Basicadjective

serving as a base or starting point;

a basic course in Russianbasic training for raw recruitsa set of basic toolsan introductory art course

Essentialadjective

of the greatest importance;

the all-important subject of disarmamentcrucial informationin chess cool nerves are of the essence

Basicadjective

of or denoting or of the nature of or containing a base

Essentialadjective

being or relating to or containing the essence of a plant etc;

essential oil

Essentialadjective

applying to essential legal principles and rules of right;

substantive law

Essentialadjective

absolutely required and not to be used up or sacrificed