Critical

How to spell critical

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce critical

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does critical mean?

1. adjectiveExtremely important to the outcome of something; decisive.
2. adjectiveExpressing disapproval or pointing out faults.
3. adjectiveRelating to a dangerous and unstable medical condition.

Critical in a sentence

• The next two weeks are critical to the success of the project.

• Her manager was unusually critical of the draft report.

• The patient remained in a critical condition overnight.

• Backing up the data before the migration is absolutely critical.

• He made several critical remarks about the new design.

• Two of the survivors were listed as critical after the crash.

Where does critical come from?

Language of origin: Greek

This word descends from the Greek kritikos, meaning 'able to judge or discern', which was built on krites, 'a judge', and the verb krinein, 'to separate, decide, or judge'. Latin took it up as criticus, and English adopted 'critical' in the late 1500s, at first describing the careful, discerning judgement of a critic. From the sense of a pivotal turning point in an illness, where a 'crisis' (the same krinein root) decided whether a patient would live or die, the word also came to mean 'decisive' or 'dangerous'. The shared root explains why 'critic', 'criticise', 'crisis', and 'criterion' all cluster together in spelling and meaning. For spellers the trap is the unstressed middle: the word is spelled crit-i-cal, with that little 'i' that the ear barely registers.

How the word is built

• crit- (from Greek krites: judge)
• -ic (adjective)
• -al (adjective suffix)