(n.) The fifth or last and highest essence or power in a natural body. See Ferment oils, under Ferment.
(n.) Hence: An extract from anything, containing its rarest virtue, or most subtle and essential constituent in a small quantity; pure or concentrated essence.
(v. t.) To distil or extract as a quintessence; to reduce to a quintessence.
Example Sentences:
(1) This was the quintessence of political violence in Mexico for decades, between the state and the leftist opposition.
(2) The idea that you can devolve it all is nuts.” Then there are the pubs, those quintessences of British culture that also have the ability to give space and identity to a city’s multiple communities.
(3) Unlike Nabokov, Kafka could certainly discern music and respond to it, but just as he found it hard to assent to "the quintessence of life", so he found it impossible to believe wholeheartedly in its expression.
(4) In his journals, he wrote that his aim was to render "the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh".
(5) On his return to California, he continued to use his camera as a means to express "the very substance and the quintessence of the thing itself", photographing in close-up what he saw around him: an egg-slicer, a toadstool, a cup, a gnarled tree.
(6) It is subtitled Something Out of Nothing, a title that says much about how his ever-restless imagination had found yet another way of seeing, and one that perhaps surprised even himself in its rendering of "the very substance and quintessence" of that extraordinary landscape.
(7) One: rural reform in a country where land, land rights and ownership of land are the quintessence of politics and power.
(8) Humiliated rage and furtive envy characterise Muslim insurrectionaries and Hindu fanatics today as much as they did the militarist Japanese insisting on their unique spiritual quintessence.
(9) Sacks goes on to quote Schopenhauer approvingly: "Music expresses only the quintessence of life and of its events, never these themselves."
Wonderful
Definition:
(a.) Adapted to excite wonder or admiration; surprising; strange; astonishing.
Example Sentences:
(1) The information about her father's semi-brainwashing forms an interesting backdrop to Malala's comments when I ask if she ever wonders about the man who tried to kill her on her way back from school that day in October last year, and why his hands were shaking as he held the gun – a detail she has picked up from the girls in the school bus with her at the time; she herself has no memory of the shooting.
(2) He said: "This is a wonderful town but Tesco will suck the life out of the greengrocers, butchers, off-licence, and then it is only a matter of time for us too.
(3) All 17 candidates are going to be participating in debate night and I think that’s a wonderful opportunity Reince Priebus Republican party officials have defended the decision to limit participation, pointing out that the chasing pack will get a chance to debate separately before the main event.
(4) But in the rush to design it, Girardet wonders if the finer details of waste disposal and green power were lost.
(5) Two years ago I met a wonderful man and we now feel it’s time to tie the knot.
(6) No evidence has been produced that she was personally involved in the bribery, but some are wondering whether the Petrobras scandal might turn into a Watergate for her.
(7) But she has struggled – quite awkwardly – to articulate her evolution on same-sex marriage, and has left environmental activists wondering what her exact energy policy is.
(8) With grievous amazement, never self-pitying but sometimes bordering on a sort of numbed wonderment, Levi records the day-to-day personal and social history of the camp, noting not only the fine gradations of his own descent, but the capacity of some prisoners to cut a deal and strike a bargain, while others, destined by their age or character for the gas ovens, follow "the slope down to the bottom, like streams that run down to the sea".
(9) Would it best best to risk a Great Reform Bill (shades of 1832) - or would piecemeal reform be best, some wonder?
(10) He added: “From what we’ve seen so far, Londoners can be forgiven for wondering if Zac will be a mayor who works to bring London’s diverse communities together or one who will drive them apart.” Others evince real surprise over Goldsmith’s stance.
(11) Given this bipartisan strategy to minimise commitments, there is little wonder that voter turnout also reached a historical low, with less than two thirds bothering to vote in the east.
(12) As he sits in Athens wondering when the International Monetary Fund is going to deliver another bailout, George Papandreou might be tempted to hum a few lines of Tired of Waiting for You.
(13) KNOWLEDGE ARCHIVE "Having watched 42-year-old Kevin Poole turn out for Derby recently, I wondered 'have any grandfathers ever played league football?'
(14) "My wonderful, brave and adored father, Jack Ashley, Lord Ashley of Stoke, has died after a short battle with pneumonia."
(15) Had not Jaggers summoned me to see him on the day of my majority some years later, I might have wondered at the psychological implausibility of an old woman training a child to be a psychopath, but luckily I was so caught up by the possibility of my benefactor's name being revealed that the thought quite slipped my mind.
(16) I believe you are aware of the meeting – and so wondered if 3pm or later on Thursday works for you?
(17) Facebook Twitter Pinterest May dismisses reports of frosty dinner with EU chief as ‘Brussels gossip’ The EU delegation are said to have wondered whether Davis might still be in his post following the general election.
(18) One of the punters came up to me after and said that I seemed confident, but he’d spent the whole time wondering when I was going to tell a joke.
(19) In north Wales, Llandudno town council has had to cancel its annual display at short notice after it was told it would have to pay at least £22,000 to insure the wonderful Victorian pier in case of a fire.
(20) No wonder public discussion of this most unexpected scientific development has so far been muted and respectful, waiting for the expert community that discovered the anomaly by accident – the Opera experiment at Gran Sasso was devised to isolate different varieties of neutrino, not to test Einstein – to work out what it all means, or doesn't.