Important vs Critical - What's the difference?
important | critical |
Having relevant and crucial value.
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*:Thus, when he drew up instructions in lawyer language, he expressed the important words by an initial, a medial, or a final consonant, and made scratches for all the words between; his clerks, however, understood him very well.
*{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)
, chapter=20 *1988, (Robert Ferro), Second Son :
*:For this was the most important thing, that when a person felt strongly about an issue in life, it mustn’t be ignored by others; for if it was, everything subsequent to it would turn out badly, even though there should seem to be no direct connection.
*{{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=May-June, author=
, title= 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 important and critical
is that important is having relevant and crucial value while critical is inclined to find fault or criticize; fastidious; captious; censorious; exacting.As a noun critical is
a critical value, factor, etc.important
English
Adjective
(en adjective)citation, passage=The story struck the depressingly familiar note with which true stories ring in the tried ears of experienced policemen.
Katrina G. Claw
Rapid Evolution in Eggs and Sperm, volume=101, issue=3, magazine=(American Scientist) , passage=In plants, the ability to recognize self from nonself plays an important role in fertilization, because self-fertilization will result in less diverse offspring than fertilization with pollen from another individual.}}
Synonyms
* (l) * See alsoAntonyms
* unimportant * negligibleDerived terms
* importantly, importantness, unimportant, VIPcritical
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.