criteria
Americannoun
Usage
What does criteria mean? Criteria is the plural of criterion—a standard or principle for judging, evaluating, or selecting something. Criteria are the ideals or requirements on which a judgment, evaluation, or selection is based. The plural of criterion can also be criterions, but this is rarely used. Criteria are often the particular requirements that someone or something must meet in order to be considered or qualify for something. An applicant for a job may be evaluated based on several criteria, including their education, experience, and references—each one of these standards is a criterion. Your grade in a class may be based on certain criteria, such as your test scores, your grades on homework and other assignments, and your participation in class. Similarly, a gymnast’s score is based on several criteria involving how well they performed certain moves. The word criteria is often used with the word meet, as in Your entry meets all of our criteria for inclusion in the exhibit. Sometimes, people try to use criteria as a singular noun (like how data is sometimes used), but this is generally considered not the right way to use it. Example: We assess the candidates based on several criteria, and one criterion is that they must have at least five years of experience in a similar position.
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.
Brazilians who watched Jordan Henderson go down clutching his forehead after being hit under the chin and Harry Maguire diving in the box want the same rigid criteria to be used as when judging Neymar.
From Reuters • Jul. 4, 2018
The dollar-store versions of the familiar black chapeau and accompanying beard of our 16th president are not awarded necessarily to the game’s best player, nor on any set of rigid criteria.
From Washington Post • Jan. 6, 2015
This differs from the top-down methodology used in distributing current EU structural funds, which have more rigid criteria defined in advance by European institutions.
From Reuters • Dec. 16, 2013
Sooner or later, too, he ran his own pen full against his rigid criteria for others.
From A Study of Hawthorne by Lathrop, George Parsons
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.
