The Fifth Essence

There are some words in our vernacular that are unique and cannot be replaced fully by monosyllabic synonyms. One of these is the word “quintessential”. It is defined as being the chief, best, most important example of something: Lincoln is considered by many as the quintessential American president. The Olympics offers the quintessential display of top athletes of the world. Charles Dickens is the quintessential author of the English working class during Victorian times.

The word originally meant the fifth essence.

So how did we come by this most unusual word?

 We have to go back to the time of Aristotle (384 B.C. -322 B.C.). Aristotle was a pupil of Plato and the tutor of Alexander the Great. He was a philosopher, mathematician, and all-around genius. It was Aristotle who came up with the term the fifth essence (Quint = five).  

In ancient times, and at times through the Middle Ages, the sages believed that there were four essences to life on our planet: Water, Fire, Air (Wind) and Earth. Aristotle claimed there was a fifth essence, a heavenly essence not originally of earth but that was absolute in its existence. And, he said, it was as necessary to daily life as the other four.

In 1609, nearly two millennia after Aristotle, the astronomer Galileo created his telescope, and those elusive elements of outer space became more easily visible. A few years later, in 1616, there were three comets seen at different times in the night sky in one calendar year, an amazing event to those on earth. Galileo later wrote a book about the cosmos and his findings of the fact that the earth rotated around the sun. The idea put him at dangerous odds with the Inquisition. He defended his findings by quoting Aristotle, insisting that the comets and other planets and stars from space were part of this Quintessence, or the fifth essence necessary to life on earth.

Because of the notoriety gained by Galileo’s findings and the ensuing attempt to discredit him, the noun quintessence, and its adjective, quintessential, gained popular usage by scholars and apologists of the Italian astronomer. As the centuries passed, the word went through a metamorphosis, and finally today, it means something slightly different from its original intention.

The word quintessential has become a popular one in the English language. We love to use it, and who wouldn’t want to be considered quintessential in something?

It’s an historic word created and made famous by two very interesting human beings, quite the “quintessentials” of their respective fields of study.

Pass it along!