critical
UK/ˈkɹɪt.ɪ.kəl//ˈkɹɪt.ɪ.kəl/
critical adjective: inclined to find fault or criticize.
Adjective
critical (comparative more critical, superlative most critical)
- Inclined to find fault or criticize.
- A good teacher is fair but critical.
- Let us go back to the beginning and consider what the charge is that has made people so critical of me, and has encouraged Meletus to draw up this indictment.1993, Plato, translated by Hugh Tredennick and Harold Tarrant, “Justice and Duty (i): Socrates Speaks at his Trial: the Apology”, in The Last Days of Socrates (Penguin Classics), revised edition...
- Synonyms:
- fastidious, captious, censorious, exacting, judgmental, slashing
- Pertaining to, or indicating, a crisis or turning point.
- This is a critical moment.
- Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery—with a verdict of guilty—is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a family perhaps at a critical moment, when the family is just assuming the robes of respectability: […] it is a black spot which...1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC
- Extremely important.
- It's critical that you deliver this on time.
- Oxygen levels on Earth skyrocketed 2.4 billion years ago, when cyanobacteria evolved photosynthesis:[…]. The evolutionary precursor of photosynthesis is still under debate, and a new study sheds light. The critical component of the photosynthetic system is the “water-oxidizing complex”, made up of...2013 September-October, Katie L. Burke, “In the News”, in American Scientist
- Synonyms:
- crucial, imperative
- Relating to criticism or careful analysis, such as literary or film criticism.
- The movie was a critical success, but bombed at the box-office.
- “Unless you are purchasing cereal from a health food store, many brands that are marketed as healthy are usually full of sugar and processed ingredients,” says Garcia.
So when you’re choosing cereal, bread or any other whole-grain product, Garcia recommends reading labels with a critical eye.2012 April 19, Alexandra Sifferlin, “‘Healthy’ Foods that Really Aren’t: Nutritionists Weigh In”, in Time, archived from the original on 12 Oct 2022
- Employing or related to textual criticism, particularly through a stemmatological comparison of all extant texts and reconstruction of the original.
- 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.
- The patient's condition is critical.
- In such a condition.
- The patient is critical.
- Two critical after fatal Wimbledon school crash
- Likely to go out of control if disturbed, that is, opposite of stable.
- The political situation was so critical that the government declared the state of siege.
- Of the point (in temperature, reagent concentration etc.) where a nuclear or chemical reaction becomes self-sustaining.
- The reaction was about to become critical.
- 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.
- Needing great discrimination to be correctly classified; easily confused.
- critical plants
Noun
critical (plural criticals)
- A critical value, factor, etc.
- The second undamped system criticals show a greater percentage depression than the first.1976, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Journal of engineering for industry, volume 98, page 508
- Finally, criticals are high-risk, high-value items that give the final product a competitive advantage in the marketplace […] Criticals, in part, determine the customer's ultimate cost of using the finished product — in our example, the computer.2008, John J. Coyle, C. John Langley, Brian Gibson, Supply Chain Management: A Logistics Perspective, page 564
- critical hit
- Synonyms:
- crit
- In breakdancing, a kind of airflare move in which the dancer hops from one hand to the other.
critical meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Malayalam and Kannada
critical in Tamil
- ஆய்திறனுடை, இக்கட்டான, குறை காண், நுண்ணாய்வுடைய, நெருக்கடியான, மாறுநிலை
critical in Urdu
- اہم, باریک, بحرانی, دقیق, مبصرانہ, نازک
critical in Malayalam
- വിമർശനാത്മകമായ, ദോഷദർശിയായ, വിമർശിക്കുന്ന, നിരൂപിക്കുന്ന, കുറ്റം കാണുന്ന, നിർണായകമായ
critical in Kannada
- ವಿಮರ್ಶಾತ್ಮಕ, ಸಂದಿಗ್ಧ, ಅಪಾಯ ಸ್ಥಿತಿಯಲ್ಲಿನ, ವಿಷಮ ಸ್ಥಿತಿಯಲ್ಲಿನ, ಗಂಭೀರವಾದ, ತೀವ್ರವಾದ
More languagesFewer languages
- critical in Odia
- ଅତିରେକ atireka
- critical in Arabic
- النقد
- critical in Indonesian
- kritis
- critical in Persian
- انتقادی enteqâdi, عیبجو 'eyb-ju, ایرادگیر irâd-gir, بحرانی bohrâni
- critical in Thai
- เกี่ยวกับการวิจารณ์, ชอบจับผิด, ภาวะวิกฤติ, สำคัญอย่างยิ่ง
Examples of critical in a sentence
- The critical component of the photosynthetic system is the “water-oxidizing complex”, made up of manganese atoms and a calcium atom.2013 September-October, Katie L. Burke, “In the News”, in American Scientist:
- Third Pole glaciers are critical to billions of people from Vietnam to Afghanistan.2018, VOA Learning English > China's Melting Glacier Brings Visitors, Adds to Climate Concerns:
Synonyms of critical
Forms of critical
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more critical |
| superlative | most critical |
| Noun | |
| plural | criticals |
Origin of critical
From Latin criticus + English -al.
Words formed from critical
- 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
Phrases with critical
- critical hits
- critical loads
- critical paths
- critical wards
- critical angles
- critical masses
- critical points
- critical tapers
- prompt critical
- critical periods
- critical sections
- critical altitudes
12 more phrasesFewer phrases
Questions about critical
- What does critical mean?
- Critical means inclined to find fault or criticize.
- What is critical in Tamil?
- Critical in Tamil is ஆய்திறனுடை, இக்கட்டான, குறை காண். See Critical meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use critical in a sentence?
- The critical component of the photosynthetic system is the “water-oxidizing complex”, made up of manganese atoms and a calcium atom.
- What part of speech is critical?
- Critical can be an adjective or a noun.
- How do you pronounce critical?
- Critical is pronounced /ˈkɹɪt.ɪ.kəl/ (UK).
Words near critical in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: critical (page history and authors); critical (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); critical (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); critical (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); critical (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ଅତିରେକ (Odia) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-critical.ogg.
Cite this entry: “critical.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/critical. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.