unessentials

unessentials pl (plural only)

1. Things that are not essential.

   Synonym: unnecessaries

   • 1779 April, uncredited correspondent, “Marshall’s Minutes of Agriculture,”, in The Monthly Review, volume 60, page 149:

     For our part, we cannot help regretting that the unessentials of religion should, in any case, be confounded with its essentials; for nothing, we are certain, has so much hurt the cause of religion.

   • 1897, Mark Twain, chapter 67, in Following the Equator […] ‎, New York: American Publishing Company:

     […] Jameson was encumbered by artillery, ammunition, and rifles. The facts of the battle show that he should have had none of those things along. They were heavy, they were in his way, they impeded his march. There was nothing to shoot at but rocks—he knew quite well that there would be nothing to shoot at but rocks—and he knew that artillery and rifles have no effect upon rocks. He was badly overloaded with unessentials.

   • 1917, Sinclair Lewis, The Job‎, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Part 2, Chapter 9, p. 133:

     Hers was no wholesome labor in which she could find sacred forgetfulness. It was the round of unessentials which all office-women know so desperately well.

   • 1944, C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters‎, London: Geoffrey Bles, Letter 16, p. 84:

     We have quite removed from men’s minds what that pestilent fellow Paul used to teach about food and other unessentials—namely, that the human without scruples should always give in to the human with scruples.

• unessential