Word of the Day -- Quintessence

Happy Monday everyone!  I hope you all had a great weekend.  Today's word of the day was Merriam Webster's word of the day from Sunday.  I usually do some research and find a word that seems interesting to me, something that fits the mood or a word that I've been thinking on for a while.  But Sunday's word was so perfect to me and so interesting, I thought I would reprint it here for you:  Quintessence -- the essence of a thing in its purest and most concentrated form; or the most typical example or representative.

Long ago, when people believed that the earth was made up of four elements—earth, air, fire, and water—they thought the stars and planets were made up of yet another element. In the Middle Ages, people called this element by its Medieval Latin name, "quinta essentia," literally, "fifth essence." Our forebears believed the quinta essentia was essential to all kinds of matter, and if they could somehow isolate it, it would cure all disease. We have since given up on that idea, but we kept "quintessence," the offspring of "quinta essentia," as a word for the purest essence of a thing. Some modern physicists have given "quintessence" a new twist—they use it for a form of so-called "dark energy," which is believed to make up 70 percent of the universe.