Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home 		English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Essay   /ɛsˈeɪ/  /ˈɛsˌeɪ/   Listen
noun
Essay  n.  (pl. essays)  
1.
An effort made, or exertion of body or mind, for the performance of anything; a trial; attempt; as, to make an essay to benefit a friend. "The essay at organization."
2.
(Lit.) A composition treating of any particular subject; usually shorter and less methodical than a formal, finished treatise; as, an essay on the life and writings of Homer; an essay on fossils, or on commerce.
3.
An assay. See Assay, n. (Obs.)
Synonyms: Attempt; trial; endeavor; effort; tract; treatise; dissertation; disquisition.


verb
Essay  v. t.  (past & past part. essayed; pres. part. essaying)  
1.
To exert one's power or faculties upon; to make an effort to perform; to attempt; to endeavor; to make experiment or trial of; to try. "What marvel if I thus essay to sing?" "Essaying nothing she can not perform." "A danger lest the young enthusiast... should essay the impossible."
2.
To test the value and purity of (metals); to assay. See Assay. (Obs.)





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words


Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar




"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


More quotes...


Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com