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
-
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
Etymology
Origin of critical
Explanation
The adjective critical has several meanings, among them, "vital," "verging on emergency," "tending to point out errors," and "careful." If you're an emergency-room doctor with a patient in critical condition (on the highest alert), it's absolutely critical (vital or essential) that you be critical (careful and judicious) in your approach to their care, so that at the critical (decisive) moment, you can save their life. You must also be critical (that is, you must point out all the errors and flaws) of the jobs your colleagues are doing.
Vocabulary lists containing critical
The SAT: Words to Capture Tone, List 1
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The SAT: Multiple-Meaning Words, List 2
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Essential Academic Vocabulary for High School Students, List 2
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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.
The Kings’ exploration of tech’s litigation underbelly arrives at at a critical moment.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 16, 2026
The slowdown may reflect OpenAI catching up as “this was the breakout quarter for open weight models,” as well as growing use of open-weight models for less intensive or critical tasks.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2026
A critical incident was declared at some London hospitals after the provider was targeted by Qilin on 3 June 2024, with blood transfusion services severely disrupted, operations cancelled and emergency patients diverted elsewhere.
From BBC ● Oct. 16, 2026
At the EU level, Kallas said the European Defence Agency had mapped all the "critical capabilities" that Europe was missing and that Europe needed to fill these gaps "as soon as possible".
From Barron's ● Oct. 16, 2026
If Darwin had actually read it—particularly as he was writing Variation and formulating pangenesis—this study might have provided the final critical insight to understand his own theory of evolution.
From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
