essentialism.

1. A view that things or categories have defining underlying essences.

2. An educational approach emphasizing a shared essential core of knowledge and skills.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• philosophical essentialism
• critique of essentialism

On the page

The critique of essentialism challenged the assumption of a fixed group nature.

Philosophical essentialism required an account of what made the property essential.

Usage notes

Primary category: academic / formal. Forms: Usually uncountable. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Established modern English lexical item. No separate regional spelling or grammatical inflection entry. Writing functions: institutional and conceptual change, philosophical orientation, qualification of recurrence and degree. Disciplines: academic writing, philosophy, cross-disciplinary analysis. Commonness: moderately common.