Subessential

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Less than essential; unimportant. rare

    "There were other things pressing, but look how subessential—continuing to read the pulp novel on the bed stand, droning through the video game on the computer, phoning the new restaurant to ask the time of the early-bird special, […]"

Example

More examples

"There were other things pressing, but look how subessential—continuing to read the pulp novel on the bed stand, droning through the video game on the computer, phoning the new restaurant to ask the time of the early-bird special, […]"

Etymology

From sub- + essential.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.