<p><strong>Adjective</strong></p><ul><li>inclined to find fault or to judge with severity, often too readily: Parents who are too critical make their children anxious.</li><li>Synonyms: carping, censorious, captious, faultfinding</li><li>involving criticism, or skillful judgment as to truth, merit, etc.: The article provides a critical analysis of the Gulf War.</li><li>Synonyms: precise, exact, judicious, discriminating</li><li>occupied with or skilled in criticism: She was one of the great critical journalists of the 20th century.</li><li>of or relating to critics or criticism, especially of literature, film, music, etc.: Critical appreciation of this author’s work has peaked in recent years.</li><li>providing textual variants, proposed emendations, etc.: The library has a new critical edition of Chaucer.</li><li>of the nature of a crisis; threatening a seriously bad outcome; grave: There was a critical shortage of food.</li><li>of decisive importance with respect to the outcome; crucial: The nation is facing a critical moment in its history.</li><li>essential; indispensable: Cocoa butter is a critical ingredient in chocolate.</li><li>Medicine/Medical: having unstable and abnormal vital signs and other unfavorable indicators, as loss of appetite, poor mobility, or unconsciousness: The patient has been upgraded from critical to stable.</li><li>Physics: pertaining to a state, value, or quantity at which one or more properties of a substance or system undergo a change: The critical temperature of benzene is 289° C.</li><li>(of fissionable material) having enough mass to sustain a chain reaction: They told us about a lab where some plutonium went critical.</li></ul>