16 April 2017
essay
[noun es-ey for 1, 2; es-ey, e-sey for 3–5; verb e-sey]
noun
1. a short literary composition on a particular theme or subject, usually in prose and generally analytic, speculative, or interpretative.
2. anything resembling such a composition:
a picture essay.
3. an effort to perform or accomplish something; attempt.
4. Philately. a design for a proposed stamp differing in any way from the design of the stamp as issued.
5. Obsolete. a tentative effort; trial; assay.
verb (used with object)
6. to try; attempt.
7. to put to the test; make trial of.
Origin of essay
Middle French
1475-1485 Middle French essayer, cognate with Anglo-French assayer to assay < Late Latin exagium a weighing, equivalent to *exag (ere), for Latin exigere to examine, test, literally, to drive out (see exact ) + -ium -ium
Related forms
essayer, noun
preessay, verb (used without object)
unessayed, adjective
well-essayed, adjective
Can be confused
assay, essay.
Dictionary.com
Examples from the Web for essay
Contemporary Examples
David Foster Wallace touched on this risk in his essay on television and fiction.
Boys Don’t Cry: In Praise of Sentiment
Andrew Sean Greer
June 25, 2013
Teles’ essay is important – even if its own argument explains why its powerful message is likely to go unheeded.
America’s Kludgeocracy Democracy
David Frum
December 10, 2012
There is, as he mentioned in a brilliant 1973 essay on bestselling novels, a Russian phrase that describes this condition.
Remembering Gore Vidal: He Was a Mortal After All
Nathaniel Rich
July 31, 2012
Former Artforum critic Thomas Lawson, also profiled in the essay, felt like he got off the hook.
The Artist Formerly Known as Janet Malcolm
Lauren Du Graf
June 5, 2013
In the essay, Havel imagines a grocer hanging a “Workers of the World, Unite!”
John Avlon: Vaclav Havel’s Heroic Politics of Truth and Responsibility
John Avlon
December 18, 2011
Historical Examples
Everybody read and admired an essay the style of which was new and striking.
Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII
John Lord
With these precautions, in 1733, was published the first part of the essay on Man.
The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes
Samuel Johnson
By returning safely with that, you may enable us to renew the essay with better calculated means.
History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I.
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
Why did you say, Diana, that you knew something about the essay?
A harum-scarum schoolgirl
Angela Brazil
The wonder of Du Maurier’s essay, the astounding spectacle of his success, cannot be diminished by any such explanation of it.
English Society
George Du Maurier
Today’s quote
Can a nation be free if it oppresses other nations? It cannot.
– Vladimir Lenin
On this day
16 April – Panda Appreciation Day. It was on this day in 1972, that the People’s Republic of China presented US President Richard Nixon with two pandas, Ling Ling and Hsing Hsing.
16 April 73AD – The Great Jewish Revolt ends when the fortress Masada falls to the Romans.
16 April 1850 – death of Marie Tussaud, French-English sculptor, founder of Madam Tussaud’s wax museum. Born 1 December 1761.
16 April 1917 – Vladimir Lenin returns to Petrograd, Russia following exile in Switzerland.
16 April 1947 – Bernard Baruch coins the term ‘Cold War’ to describe the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.
16 April 1990 – Dr Jack Kevorkian, (euthanasia activist, otherwise known as the Doctor of Death) participates in his first assisted suicide.