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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


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"Essay" Quotes from Famous Books



... (Milton's sonnet). Emathia was part of Macedonia, but the word is used loosely for Thessaly or Macedonia. (2) Crassus had been defeated and slain by the Parthians in B.C. 53, four years before this period. (3) Mr. Froude in his essay entitled "Divus Caesar" hints that these famous lines may have been written in mockery. Probably the five years known as the Golden Era of Nero had passed when they were written: yet the text itself does not ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... you," I answered, "I am not, like Thorndyke, one to essay the impossible, and if I could be angry it would hurt me more than it would you. But, in fact, you are not to blame at all, and I am an egotistical brute. Of course you were alarmed and distressed; nothing could be more natural. So now let me ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... mainly German in speech, survived for a short time in the Empire. Like all falsehood, the falsehood of the "Teutonic theory" could not live without an element of truth to distort, and it is the business of anyone who is writing true history, even in so short an essay as this, to show what that ground was and how it ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... graduating class were expected to write an essay, the Faculty to judge of their merits, and to choose from among them ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... the Christian demonology in detail and give an account of its various aspects is outside the scope of this essay. Its origin is a twofold one, partly the Jewish demonology, which just at the commencement of our era had received a great impetus, partly the theory of the Greek philosophers, which we have characterised above when speaking of Xenocrates. The Christian ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann


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