critical
/ˈkɹɪt.ɪ.kəl/ adjective B1- Inclined to find fault or criticize. · A good teacher is fair but critical.
- Pertaining to, or indicating, a crisis or turning point. · This is a critical moment.
- Extremely important. · It's critical that you deliver this on time.
- Relating to criticism or careful analysis, such as literary or film criticism. · The movie was a critical success, but bombed at the box-office.
- Employing or related to textual criticism, particularly through a stemmatological comparison of all extant texts and reconstruction of the original.
- Of a patient condition involving unstable vital signs and a prognosis that predicts the condition could worsen; or, a patient condition that requires urgent treatment in an intensive care or critical care medical facility. · The patient's condition is critical.
- In such a condition. · The patient is critical.· Two critical after fatal Wimbledon school crash
- Likely to go out of control if disturbed, that is, opposite of stable. · The political situation was so critical that the government declared the state of siege.
From the library
Anne expanded like a flower under this wholesome influence and carried home to the admiring Matthew and the critical Marilla glowing accounts of schoolwork and aims.
She had an uneasy feeling that it was rather sinful to set one’s heart so intensely on any human creature as she had set hers on Anne, and perhaps she performed a sort of unconscious penance for this by being stricter and more critical than if the girl had been less dear to her.
Rachel’s critical eye.
Everything was so strange, so brilliant, so bewildering--the rows of ladies in evening dress, the critical faces, the whole atmosphere of wealth and culture about her.
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