unessential

From un- +‎ essential.

unessential (comparative more unessential, superlative most unessential)

1. Not essential.

   Synonyms: inessential, unimportant

   Antonym: essential

   • 1676, Joseph Glanvill, Seasonable Reflections and Discourses, London: R.W. [and] H. Mortlock, p. 92,

     [I] have a question more to ask you on occasion of what you have told me; and that is, Whether you are to leave every Minister and Church, as soon as any thing is said that is really erroneous, in the lesser and unessential matters?

   • 1716, Joseph Addison, The Free-Holder, No. 39, 4 May, 1716, London: D. Midwinter and J. Tonson, p. 225,

     [He was] moved rather with Pity than Indignation towards the Persons of those, who differed from him in the unessential Parts of Christianity.

   • 1887, Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders, Chapter 18,

     “ […] strangeness is not in the nature of a thing, but in its relation to something extrinsic—in this case an unessential observer.”

   • 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, New York: Scribner, 1953, Chapter 9, p. 165,

     But all this part of it seemed remote and unessential.

2. Void of essence, or real being.

   Synonym: unsubstantial

   • 1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 2, lines 438-441,

     These [gates] past, if any pass, the void profound

     Of unessential Night receives him next

     Wide gaping, and with utter loss of being

     Threatens him,

   • 1686, William Hall, A sermon preach'd before Her Majesty the Queen Dowager, London: William Grantham, p. 7,

     […] even before the Heavens, before those material Orbs, that now rowl over us, were call’d from the dark, and profound Abyss of unessential Nothing:

• unessentiality

• unessentials