| 词组 | essential |
| 释义 | essential I 1. Essential is used most often with the preposition to when the construction requires a preposition: • ... you are essential to her perfect happiness — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859 Less frequently but still quite commonly, essential may be used with for: • ... a good liberal education during the undergraduate years is essential for every librarian —Current Biography, June 1964 Sometimes it is used with in: • ... he possesses the charismatic warmth, color, and conviction essential in a national leader —Current Biography, September 1964 Still less often essential is used with as: • ... socioeconomic status classifications are essential as a means of giving some meaning to the huge amounts of data —Annual Report, Educational Testing Service, 1966-1967 2. A few commentators claim essential is an absolute adjective and object to its use with adverbial qualifiers (see absolute adjectives). Follett 1966 says it does not admit of more or less or even so. Partridge 1942 and Jacques Barzun, in American Scholar, Summer 1957, seem to be making the same objection. Harper 1975, 1985, while objecting to more, finds most essential acceptable because it is an idiom used for emphasis rather than comparison. Most essential is indeed used for emphasis: • The animal nature, indeed, is a most essential part of the Faun's composition —Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun, 1860 • This reasonableness was a quality which events were to prove most essential in meeting the unexpected difficulties —Dictionary of American Biography, 1928 And also absolutely essential: • ... it is now fairly clear that they are absolutely essential to him as a man and as a writer —Richard Poirier, Saturday Rev., 22 Apr. 1972 So essential seems likewise to be chiefly emphatic: • In any highly civilised society disguise plays so large a part, politeness is so essential, that to throw off the ceremonies ... is as much a necessity as a breath of air in a hot room —Virginia Woolf, The Second Common Reader, 1932 • So essential was the service rendered by the Abbott mills that the employees were exempted from the draft —Dictionary of American Biography, 1928 • ... the savage bulls so essential to ... bullfighting — William D. Patterson, Saturday Rev., 26 Dec. 1953 Most, absolutely, and so are the chief intensifies with essential. We have a few examples with very, but they seem curiously flat: • The sound financing of the building is very essential —Loretta Quinlan, Massachusetts Teacher, May 1965 • For many of us who travel to Germany, that is a very essential thing to remember —Richard Atcheson, Saturday Rev., 25 Mar. 1972 But writers do also use more and most with essential for comparison and the use must be considered standard: • The most essential characteristic of mind is memory —Bertrand Russell, in Encore, July 1946 • Glubb asked that the Legion be allowed to serve also in Italy, but this the British refused, feeling that the protection of the oil pipelines in the Arab countries was more essential —Current Biography 1951 • The most enduring and most essential qualities of mind and personality are founded in the early years of life —Robert Havighurst, quoted in Girl Scout Leader, November 1967 • ... the determination of what we had and what we needed being more essential than the qualities of the old-style professional production man —David Halberstam, Harper's, February 1971 • Once the ranks are filled with career soldiers, a "civilian-oriented leadership" will be more essential than ever —D. Park Teter, Change, September 1971 II When the noun essential is used with a preposition, it is used most often with of: • ... these mountain people, albeit unlettered, have acquired so many of the essentials of culture —F. R. Leavis, The Common Pursuit, 1952 Less frequently, essential appears with in, for, or to: • ... felt that religion was decent and right, an essential in an honest man's life —Pearl Buck, The Long Love, 1949 • ... has plenty of at least one essential for success as an Albany lobbyist —Dwight Macdonald, New Yorker, 22 Aug. 1953 • ... a change of underclothes and of socks are almost an essential to me —Graham Greene, Travels with My Aunt, 1969 |
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