different between critical vs momentous

English

Etymology

From the suffix -al and Latin criticus, from Ancient Greek ???????? (kritikós, “of or for judging, able to discern”) <????? (krín?, “I separate, judge”); also the root of crisis.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?k??t?k?l/

Adjective

critical (comparative more critical, superlative most critical)

1. Inclined to find fault or criticize

   Synonyms: fastidious, captious, censorious, exacting

2. Pertaining to, or indicating, a crisis or turning point.
3. Extremely important.
   • 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.

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.

   Coordinate terms: fair, serious, stable

6. Likely to go out of control if disturbed, that is, opposite of stable.

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

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.

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Noun

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.

Further reading

• critical on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Medical state on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• critical in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• critical in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• critical at OneLook Dictionary Search

English

Etymology

From moment +? -ous.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /m???m?n.t?s/
• (US) IPA^(key): /mo??m?n.t?s/
• Rhymes: -?nt?s

Adjective

momentous (comparative more momentous, superlative most momentous)

1. Outstanding in importance, of great consequence.
   • 1725, Daniel Defoe, Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business:

     The reason why I did not publish this book till the end of the last sessions of parliament was, because I did not care to interfere with more momentous affairs.

   • 1831, James Fenimore Cooper, Homeward Bound, ch. 31:

     "It has been a momentous month, and I hope we shall all retain healthful recollections of it as long as we live."

   • 1902, Joseph Conrad, The End of the Tether, ch. 3:

     What to the other parties was merely the sale of a ship was to him a momentous event involving a radically new view of existence.

   • 2007 July 1, Richard Dawkins, "Inferior Design," New York Times (retrieved 19 Nov 2013):

     Natural selection is arguably the most momentous idea ever to occur to a human mind, because it — alone as far as we know — explains the elegant illusion of design that pervades the living kingdoms and explains, in passing, us.

Derived terms

• momentously
• momentousness

Translations

Anagrams

• mesonotum