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Critical vs Difficult - What's the difference?

critical | difficult | Related terms |

As adjectives the difference between critical and difficult

is that critical is inclined to find fault or criticize; fastidious; captious; censorious; exacting while difficult is hard, not easy, requiring much effort.

As a noun critical

is a critical value, factor, etc.

As a verb difficult is

to make difficult; to impede; to perplex.

critical

English

Adjective

(en adjective)
  • Inclined to find fault or criticize; fastidious; captious; censorious; exacting.
  • :
  • Pertaining to, or indicating, a crisis or turning point.
  • :
  • *
  • *: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.
  • :
  • *{{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=September-October, author= Katie L. Burke
  • , magazine=(American Scientist), title= In the News , passage=Oxygen levels on Earth skyrocketed 2.4 billion years ago, when cyanobacteria evolved photosynthesis:
  • Relating to criticism or careful analysis, such as literary or film criticism.
  • :
  • (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.
  • :
  • Likely to go out of control if disturbed, that is, opposite of stable.
  • :
  • Of the point (in temperature, reagent concentration etc.) where a nuclear or chemical reaction becomes self-sustaining.
  • :
  • 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)
  • A critical value, factor, etc.
  • * 1976 , American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Journal of engineering for industry (volume 98, page 508)
  • The second undamped system criticals show a greater percentage depression than the first.
  • * 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.

    difficult

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Hard, not easy, requiring much effort.
  • * (Nathaniel Hawthorne) (1804-1864)
  • There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, and difficult world, alone.
  • * 2008 , Daniel Goleman, Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama (ISBN 0307483762), page 199:
  • In adults, the same kind of anger has been studied in people trying to solve a very difficult math problem. Though the tough math problem is very frustrating, there is an active attempt to solve the problem and meet the goal.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= Boundary problems , passage=Economics is a messy discipline: too fluid to be a science, too rigorous to be an art. Perhaps it is fitting that economists’ most-used metric, gross domestic product (GDP), is a tangle too.
  • Hard to manage, uncooperative, troublesome.
  • Usage notes

    Difficult'' implies that considerable mental effort or physical skill is required, or that obstacles are to be overcome which call for sagacity and skill in the doer; as, a ''difficult'' task. Thus, "hard" is not always synonymous with difficult: Other examples include ''a ''difficult'' operation in surgery'' and ''a ''difficult'' passage by an author (that is, a passage which is hard to understand).

    Synonyms

    * burdensome, cumbersome, hard * see also

    Derived terms

    * difficultly

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • (obsolete) To make difficult; to impede; to perplex.
  • Statistics

    *