Criteria

How to spell criteria

8 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce criteria

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does criteria mean?

1. nounThe standards or principles by which something is judged, tested, or decided; the plural of criterion.

Criteria in a sentence

• The panel measured every applicant against the same criteria.

• These criteria determine which projects receive funding.

Where does criteria come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word comes from the Greek kriterion, meaning 'a means of judging' or 'a standard for a decision'. That noun was built on krites, 'a judge', which in turn grew from the verb krinein, 'to separate, sift, or decide'. English adopted the singular criterion in the early 1600s as a learned term for a test or standard, and because the original Greek plural of kriterion is kriteria, that classical plural came along with it. The same krinein root sits behind a surprising family of English words, including 'critic', 'crisis', and 'discriminate', all of which involve sorting and judging. The biggest modern trap is grammatical rather than orthographic: criteria is strictly plural, so 'one criteria' is incorrect; the single standard is a criterion.

How the word is built

• criteri- (from Greek kriterion: a means of judging)
• -a (Greek neuter plural ending)