say it: ES-uhns
essence is a noun meaning "the choicest or most essential or most vital part of some idea or experience". It carries 4 recorded senses.
Canada · United Kingdom
any substance possessing to a high degree the predominant properties of a plant or drug or other natural product from which it is extracted
a toiletry that emits and diffuses a fragrant odor
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for essence come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.