Quintessentialize

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. to purify or concentrate something by removing all non-essential aspects to reveal its most fundamental and concentrated nature
2. To transform something so it embodies its most perfect or pure form without any extraneous elements
3. To refine or distill a subject to its most essential and exemplary state

Etymology: "Quintessentialize" is a plain formation: the adjective "quintessential" with the verbal suffix "-ize" attached, meaning to reduce something to its purest essence or to make it embody a type perfectly. The adjective it rests on carries the more interesting history. "Quintessence" came into English from medieval Latin "quinta essentia", literally "fifth essence". Ancient Greek natural philosophers held that everything was made of four elements (earth, water, air, fire), and Aristotle proposed a fifth, heavenly substance making up the stars and planets. Alchemists later sought this fifth essence as the pure, perfect core hidden within matter, which is why the word came to mean the most concentrated, refined form of a thing. The suffix "-ize" follows the same route as many English verbs, coming through Latin and Greek endings that turned nouns and adjectives into verbs meaning "to make or treat in a certain way."