critical

UK/ˈkɹɪt.ɪ.kəl/US/ˈkɹɪt.ɪ.kəl/

adjectiveB23 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #2,137 of 15,258leans written

Critical means extremely important at this exact moment. A critical decision, a critical stage, critical to the plan.

It also means quick to point out faults: critical of the report, a critical review — and those two senses can collide badly in the same sentence. In medicine, critical is a condition category meaning life-threatening. Critical thinking means careful reasoned judgement rather than fault-finding, which is why the phrase confuses people. Note criticism, critique, and critical mass, which is a physics term used everywhere else.

Definitions of critical

1adjectivecriticalExtremely important at this exact moment.B2
“The next four weeks are critical and everybody is on holiday.”
2adjectivequickQuick to point out faults.B2
“The report was very critical of the hospital's safety record.”
3adjectivelifeLife-threatening, of a medical condition.B2
“He was critical for about two days and then improved.”

Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.

critical is a quality of importance or fault-finding.

Where it comes from

From criticus + -al.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sharper Adjectives

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critical in the wild

A common theme of critical approaches in psychology is the assessment of the social effects of psychological theories and practices.
Critical psychology
A perfect sphere, which has the lowest surface-area-to-volume ratio, gives the minimal critical size.
Critical mass
A safety-critical system is designed to lose less than one life per billion hours of operation.
Safety-critical system
At the critical point, defined by a critical temperature Tc and a critical pressure pc, phase boundaries vanish.
Critical point (thermodynamics)
The word critical in the name is an academic reference to critical theory, not criticizing or blaming individuals.
Critical race theory

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

Definitions of critical

1adjectivecriticalExtremely important at this exact moment.B2

“The next four weeks are critical and everybody is on holiday.”

2adjectivequickQuick to point out faults.B2

“The report was very critical of the hospital's safety record.”

3adjectivelifeLife-threatening, of a medical condition.B2

“He was critical for about two days and then improved.”

Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.

critical is a quality of importance or fault-finding.