In scholastic philosophy, quiddity (; Latin: quidditas) was another term for the essence of an object, literally its "whatness" or "what it is". The term derives from the Latin word quidditas, which was used by the medieval scholastics as a literal translation of the equivalent term in Aristotle's Greek to ti ên einai (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι) or "the what it was to be (a given thing)".