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Essay   /ɛsˈeɪ/  /ˈɛsˌeɪ/   Listen
Essay

noun
(pl. essays)
1.
An analytic or interpretive literary composition.
2.
A tentative attempt.
verb
(past & past part. essayed; pres. part. essaying)
1.
Make an effort or attempt.  Synonyms: assay, attempt, seek, try.  "The infant had essayed a few wobbly steps" , "The police attempted to stop the thief" , "He sought to improve himself" , "She always seeks to do good in the world"
2.
Put to the test, as for its quality, or give experimental use to.  Synonyms: examine, prove, test, try, try out.  "Test this recipe"



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"Essay" Quotes from Famous Books



... examination found Ling alternately elated or depressed, according to the length and style of the essay which he had written while enclosed in his solitary examination cell. The trials each lasted a complete day, and long before the fifteen days which composed the full examination were passed, Ling found himself half regretting ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah

... 80th year. After going through the ordinary course of education at Gottingen, and having made a rapid tour through Holland, England, and France, he became a pupil of Werner at the mining school of Freyburg, and in his 21st year published an "Essay on the Basalts of the Rhine." Though he soon became officially connected with the mining corps, he was enabled to continue his excursions in foreign countries, for, during the six or seven years succeeding ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... we would have wished him to have followed.' He takes the words but and humour. One part of his definition of humour is curious—'something which comes upon a man by fits, which he can neither command nor restrain, and which is not perfectly consistent with true politeness.' This essay has not, I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... Mitford, in his "Essay on the Poetry of Gray," says of this Ode: "The tendency of The Bard is to show the retributive justice that follows an act of tyranny and wickedness; to denounce on Edward, in his person and his progeny, the effect of the crime he had committed in the massacre of the bards; to ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray

... treatment, the able essay by Rev. G.E. Ellis, in Winsor's seventh volume, is especially rich in bibliographical references. See also Sabine's Loyalists of the American Revolution, 2 vols., Boston, 1864; Ryerson's Loyalists of America, 2 vols., Toronto, 1880; ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske


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