critical
Americanadjective
-
inclined to find fault or to judge with severity, often too readily.
Parents who are too critical make their children anxious.
- Synonyms:
- carping, censorious, captious, faultfinding
-
involving criticism, or skillful judgment as to truth, merit, etc..
The article provides a critical analysis of the Gulf War.
- Synonyms:
- precise, exact, judicious, discriminating
-
occupied with or skilled in criticism.
She was one of the great critical journalists of the 20th century.
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of or relating to critics or criticism, especially of literature, film, music, etc..
Critical appreciation of this author’s work has peaked in recent years.
-
providing textual variants, proposed emendations, etc..
The library has a new critical edition of Chaucer.
-
of the nature of a crisis; threatening a seriously bad outcome; grave.
There was a critical shortage of food.
-
of decisive importance with respect to the outcome; crucial.
The nation is facing a critical moment in its history.
-
Cocoa butter is a critical ingredient in chocolate.
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Medicine/Medical. having unstable and abnormal vital signs and other unfavorable indicators, as loss of appetite, poor mobility, or unconsciousness.
The patient has been upgraded from critical to stable.
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Physics.
-
pertaining to a state, value, or quantity at which one or more properties of a substance or system undergo a change.
The critical temperature of benzene is 289° C.
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(of fissionable material) having enough mass to sustain a chain reaction.
They told us about a lab where some plutonium went critical.
-
adjective
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containing or making severe or negative judgments
-
containing careful or analytical evaluations
a critical dissertation
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of or involving a critic or criticism
-
of or forming a crisis; crucial; decisive
a critical operation
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urgently needed
critical medical supplies
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informal so seriously injured or ill as to be in danger of dying
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physics of, denoting, or concerned with a state in which the properties of a system undergo an abrupt change
a critical temperature
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(of a nuclear power station or reactor) to reach a state in which a nuclear-fission chain reaction becomes self-sustaining
Other Word Forms
- anticritical adjective
- criticality noun
- critically adverb
- criticalness noun
- noncritical adjective
- pseudocritical adjective
Etymology
Origin of critical
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
One person is in a critical condition after the incident.
From BBC
“We will fight to restore these critical reforms and protect American lives,” McLaughlin said in a statement.
From Salon
That’s critical in terms of how people listen to holiday music, said Bill Werde, director of Syracuse University’s Bandier Program for Recording and Entertainment Industries.
From MarketWatch
They found that the brain's inability to maintain normal levels of a critical cellular energy molecule called NAD+ plays a major role in driving Alzheimer's.
From Science Daily
His role as a Palestinian inmate in an Israeli prison in the 1980s film "Beyond the Walls" earned him critical acclaim in Israel and around the world.
From Barron's
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
