Caustic vs Critical - What's the difference?
caustic | critical |
Capable of burning, corroding or destroying organic tissue.
Sharp, bitter, cutting, biting, and sarcastic in a scathing way.
*
, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=8
, passage=The humor of my proposition appealed more strongly to Miss Trevor than I had looked for, and from that time forward she became her old self again;
Any substance or means which, applied to animal or other organic tissue, burns, corrodes, or destroys it by chemical action; an escharotic.
(optics, computer graphics) The envelope of reflected or refracted rays of light for a given surface or object.
(mathematics) The envelope of reflected or refracted rays for a given curve.
(informal, chemistry) caustic soda
Inclined to find fault or criticize; fastidious; captious; censorious; exacting.
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Pertaining to, or indicating, a crisis or turning point.
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*
*: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.
Extremely important.
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*{{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=September-October, author=
, magazine=(American Scientist), title= Relating to criticism or careful analysis, such as literary or film criticism.
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(lb) 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.
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Likely to go out of control if disturbed, that is, opposite of stable.
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Of the point (in temperature, reagent concentration etc.) where a nuclear or chemical reaction becomes self-sustaining.
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A critical value, factor, etc.
* 1976 , American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Journal of engineering for industry (volume 98, page 508)
* 2008 , John J. Coyle, C. John Langley, Brian Gibson, Supply Chain Management: A Logistics Perspective (page 564)
As adjectives the difference between caustic and critical
is that caustic is caustic while critical is inclined to find fault or criticize; fastidious; captious; censorious; exacting.As a noun critical is
a critical value, factor, etc.caustic
English
Adjective
(en adjective)Synonyms
* (capable of destroying tissue ): acidic, biting, burning, corrosive, searing * (severe, sharp ): bitchy, biting, catty, mordacious, nasty, sarcastic, scathing, sharp, spitefulQuotations
* 1843': "How now!" said Scrooge, '''caustic and cold as ever. — Charles Dickens, ''A Christmas Carol * 1843': The bargain was not concluded as easily as might have been expected though, for Scadder was '''caustic and ill-humoured, and cast much unnecessary opposition in the way — Charles Dickens, ''Martin Chuzzlewit * 1853': Madame Beck esteemed me learned and blue; Miss Fanshawe, '''caustic , ironic, and cynical — Charlotte Bronte, ''Villette * 1857':The Secretary and the Assistant-Secretaries would say little '''caustic things about him to the senior clerks, and seemed somewhat to begrudge him his new honours. — Anthony Trollope, ''The Three Clerks * 1886': this set of worthies, who were only too prone to shut up their emotions with '''caustic words. — Thomas Hardy, ''The Mayor of Casterbridge * 1930s???': though he came too late / To join the martyrs, there was still a place / Among the tempters for a ' caustic tongue / / To test the resolution of the young / With tales of the small failings of the great — W.H.Auden, 'The Quest'Derived terms
* caustic curve * caustic potash * caustic soda * caustic surfaceNoun
(en noun)Derived terms
* lunar causticcritical
English
Adjective
(en adjective)Katie L. Burke
In the News, passage=Oxygen levels on Earth skyrocketed 2.4 billion years ago, when cyanobacteria evolved photosynthesis:
Derived terms
{{der3, criticality , critically , criticalness , critical angle , critical mass , critical point , critical thinking , mission-critical , pseudocritical , supercritical}}See also
* (wikipedia "critical") * (Medical state)Noun
(en noun)- The second undamped system criticals show a greater percentage depression than the first.
- 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.