English Explanatory Dictionary

critical

English dictionary entry

Meanings

adj
  1. Inclined to find fault or criticize.
  2. Pertaining to, or indicating, a crisis or turning point.
  3. Extremely important.
  4. Relating to criticism or careful analysis, such as literary or film criticism.
  5. Employing or related to textual criticism, particularly through a stemmatological comparison of all extant texts and reconstruction of the original.
  6. Of a patient condition involving unstable vital signs and a prognosis that predicts the condition could worsen; or, a patient condition that requires urgent treatment in an intensive care or critical care medical facility.
  7. In such a condition.
  8. Likely to go out of control if disturbed, that is, opposite of stable.
  9. Of the point (in temperature, reagent concentration etc.) where a nuclear or chemical reaction becomes self-sustaining.
  10. Of a temperature that is equal to the temperature of the critical point of a substance, i.e. the temperature above which the substance cannot be liquefied.
  11. Needing great discrimination to be correctly classified; easily confused.
noun
  1. A critical value, factor, etc.
  2. critical hit
  3. In breakdancing, a kind of airflare move in which the dancer hops from one hand to the other.

Pronunciation

/ˈkɹɪt.ɪ.kəl/ [ˈkɹɪɾ.ɪ.kəl] en-us-critical.ogg

Word forms

critical more critical most critical criticals

Etymology

From Latin criticus + -al, from Ancient Greek κριτικός (kritikós, “of or for judging, able to discern”), from κρίνω (krínō, “to separate, judge”); also the root of crisis.

Synonyms

fastidious captious censorious exacting judgmental crucial imperative crit

Related words

critic criticism

Derived words

accelerated critical illness acritical antecritical anticritical autocritical bicritical biocritical business-critical cricondentherm crifanac critical altitude critical angle critical apparatus critical applied linguistics critical brain hypothesis critical care critical commentary critical condition critical dissonance critical exponent critical function critical hit critical illness critical incident stress management criticality critical load critically critical mass critical micelle concentration criticalness critical opalescence critical path critical period critical philosophy critical point critical point drying critical race theory critical rationalism critical reception critical Reynolds number critical section critical success factor critical support critical taper critical temperature critical theory critical thinking critical tide level critical ward delayed critical ecocritical ethnocritical Eurocritical form-critical gender critical gender-critical gender-critical feminism gender-critical feminist geocritical gynocritical

Translations

Armenian: քննական Bulgarian: критичен Catalan: crític Dutch: kritisch Finnish: arvostelu- Finnish: kriittinen German: Kritiker- German: Kritik- Greek: κριτικός Hungarian: kritikai Irish: cáinteach Irish: criticiúil Kazakh: сыншыл Kazakh: сыни Korean: 비판적 Persian: انتقادی Russian: крити́ческий Slovak: kritický Spanish: crítico Thai: เกี่ยวกับการวิจารณ์ Ukrainian: крити́чний Italian: critico
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