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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



... antiquity. The tributes of Addison, Tennyson, and others, the throbbing paraphrases and ecstatic interpretations of Swinburne, are too well known to call for special comment in this brief note; but the concise summing up of her genius by Mr. Watts-Dunton in his remarkable essay on poetry is so convincing and illuminating that it seems to demand quotation here: "Never before these songs were sung, and never since did the human soul, in the grip of a fiery passion, utter a cry ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... minutes before I ventured to haul in the line which dangled downward from my hand. Everything remained quiet below, and, coiling it carefully over my arm, I noiselessly arose to my feet once more, poising myself to essay a second cast. As straight this time as an arrow from the taut string of a bow the noose sped silently away into the darkness. I felt a thrill of delight tingle through me as the end settled softly over the end of the vague, distant spar. I drew the cord taut and firm, not a sound ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... blue bag fitted with elaborate treatises upon the corn laws, and among other pamphlets a recent number of Punch, forthwith travelled to Oxford, and by the kind permission of the meeting was permitted to essay a speech, about what nobody could divine, and in a manner truly original. It is, however, due to the monopolists of Oxfordshire to state that they did not accredit their volunteer champion, and even ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... engagements for that morning, she proposed to her companion a second visit to the Colosseum, that she might once more essay the sketch which had baffled her the day before. Both Madam Dormandy and the advocate signified their readiness to accompany her, the more so as a party of German visitors was planning an inspection of the Colosseum's subterranean chambers and passages, and Zimandy proposed ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... contents of this essay in the most general terms, we find that in the conception of denudation as producing the convection and accumulation of radiothermal energy the surface features of the globe receive a new significance. The heat of the earth is not internal only, but rather ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly


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