• IPA: /ˈkɹɪtɪkəl/

critical

1. Inclined to find fault or criticize

   Synonyms: fastidious, captious, censorious, exacting

   A good teacher is fair but critical.

2. Pertaining to, or indicating, a crisis or turning point.

   This is a critical moment.

   • 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate: A Novel, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], OCLC 16832619 ↗:

     Such a scandal as the prosecution of a brother for forgery—with a verdict of guilty—is a most truly horrible, deplorable, fatal thing. It takes the respectability out of a family perhaps at a critical moment, when the family is just assuming the robes of respectability: […] it is a black spot which all the soaps ever advertised could never wash off.

3. Extremely important.

   It's critical that you deliver this on time.

   • 2018, VOA Learning English > China's Melting Glacier Brings Visitors, Adds to Climate Concerns ↗

     Third Pole glaciers are critical to billions of people from Vietnam to Afghanistan.

4. Relating to criticism or careful analysis, such as literary or film criticism.

   The movie was a critical success, but bombed at the box-office.

5. (medicine) 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.

6. 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.

7. (physics) Of the point (in temperature, reagent concentration etc.) where a nuclear or chemical reaction becomes self-sustaining.

   The reaction was about to become critical.

8. (physics) Of a temperature that is equal to the temperature of the critical point of a substance, i.e. the temperature above which the substance cannot be liquefied.

• French: critique
• German: kritisch
• Portuguese: crítico
• Russian: приди́рчивый
• Spanish: crítico, crítica

• German: kritisch, entscheidend
• Russian: крити́ческий
• Spanish: álgido

• German: entscheidend, wesentlich , wichtig, unverzichtbar , unabdingbar , unerlässlich
• Portuguese: crítico
• Russian: крити́ческий
• Spanish: clave, trascendental, coyuntural

• German: Kritiker-, Kritik-
• Russian: крити́ческий

• German: bedenklich, kritisch

• French: critique
• German: kritisch

critical (plural criticals)

1. A critical value, factor, etc.
   • 2008, John J. Coyle, C. John Langley, Brian Gibson, Supply Chain Management: A Logistics Perspective (page 564)

     Finally, criticals are high-risk, high-value items that give the final product a competitive advantage in the marketplace […] Criticals, in part, determine the customer's ultimate cost of using the finished product — in our example, the computer.

2. In breakdancing, a kind of airflare move in which the dancer hops from one hand to the other.