The Rediscovery of Meaning and Other Essays"


An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own , but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a , a , an , a , and a . Essays have been sub-classified as formal and informal: formal essays are characterized by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," whereas the informal essay is characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc.


A very close approach to the evil of Idi Amin is essayed in Giles Foden's 1998 novel The Last King of Scotland, whose narrator is the Scottish personal physician to the dictator.
— Norman Rush, The New York Review of Books, 7 Oct. 2004

Essays are commonly used as , political , learned , observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. Almost all modern essays are written in , but works in have been dubbed essays (e.g., 's and ). While brevity usually defines an essay, voluminous works like 's and 's are counterexamples.

ESSAY | definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary

In some countries (e.g., the United States and Canada), essays have become a major part of formal . Secondary students are taught structured essay formats to improve their writing skills; are often used by in selecting applicants, and in the humanities and social sciences essays are often used as a way of assessing the performance of students during final exams.

The word derives from the French infinitive , "to try" or "to attempt". In English first meant "a trial" or "an attempt", and this is still an alternative meaning. The Frenchman (1533–1592) was the first author to describe his work as essays; he used the term to characterize these as "attempts" to put his thoughts into writing.

Subsequently, has been defined in a variety of ways. One definition is a "prose composition with a focused subject of discussion" or a "long, systematic discourse".It is difficult to define the genre into which essays fall. , a leading essayist, gives guidance on the subject. He notes that "the essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything", and adds that "by tradition, almost by definition, the essay is a short piece". Furthermore, Huxley argues that "essays belong to a literary species whose extreme variability can be studied most effectively within a three-poled frame of reference".These three poles (or worlds in which the essay may exist) are:

While this distinction might seem clear-cut on the surface, there exists a great deal of historical overlap between essay and assay. The two words derive from the same root—the Middle French essai, which ultimately derives from a Late Latin noun, exagium, meaning "act of weighing."


ESSAY definition in American English

For the modern noun use of essay to mean "a written exploration of a topic," we can almost certainly thank Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), a French writer noted for working in the form. Borrowing a word that emphasized their identity as literary "attempts," Montaigne devised Essais as a title for the vignette-typed pieces that he began publishing in 1580 and spanned over a thousand pages, covering subjects as varied and wide-ranging as solitude, cannibalism, and drunkenness.

essay, v. meanings, etymology and more | Oxford English Dictionary

Montaigne's "attempts" grew out of his . Inspired in particular by the works of , a translation of whose () into French had just been published by , Montaigne began to compose his essays in 1572; the first edition, entitled , was published in two volumes in 1580. For the rest of his life, he continued revising previously published essays and composing new ones. A third volume was published posthumously; together, their over 100 examples are widely regarded as the predecessor of the modern essay.

definition of essay by The Free Dictionary

While Montaigne's philosophy was admired and copied in France, none of his most immediate disciples tried to write essays. But Montaigne, who liked to fancy that his family (the Eyquem line) was of English extraction, had spoken of the English people as his "cousins", and he was early read in England, notably by .

Essay in Literature: Definition & Examples | SuperSummary

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Essay Definition & Meaning | Britannica Dictionary

Bacon's , published in book form in 1597 (only five years after the death of Montaigne, containing the first ten of his essays), 1612, and 1625, were the first works in English that described themselves as . first used the word in 1609, according to the .Other English essayists included , who published essays in 1600 and 1617 that were popular at the time, (1577–1641) and (1605–1682). In Italy, wrote about courtly manners in his essay . In the 17th century, the Spanish wrote about the theme of wisdom.